Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore

This book explores race and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore from a range of different disciplinary perspectives, showing how race and multiculturalism are represented, how multiculturalism works out in practice and how attitudes towards race and multiculturalism – and multicultural practices – have developed over time. Going beyond existing studies – which concentrate on the politics and public aspects of multiculturalism – this book burrows deeper into the cultural underpinnings of multicultural politics; relating the subject to the theoretical angles of cultural studies and post-colonial theory and discussing a range of empirical examples (drawn from extensive original research, covering diverse practices such as films, weblogs, music subcultures, art, policy discourse, textbooks, novels, poetry) which demonstrate overall how the identity politics of race and intercultural interaction are being shaped today. It concentrates on two key Asian countries particularly noted for their relatively successful record in managing ethnic differences, at a time when many fast-developing Asian countries increasingly have to come to terms with cultural pluralism and migrant diversity.

Daniel P.S. Goh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.

Matilda Gabrielpillai is Assistant Professor in Literature at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Philip Holden is Associate Professor of English Literature at the National University of Singapore. His latest book is Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State (2008).

Gaik Cheng Khoo is a Lecturer in Gender, Sexuality and Culture at the Australian National University. She recently published Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature (2006). Routledge Malaysian Studies Series Published in association with Malaysian Social Science Association (MSSA) Series Editors: Mohammed Hazim Shah, University of Malaya, Shamsul A.B., University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Terence Gomez, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva

The Routledge Malaysian Studies Series publishes high-quality scholarship that provides important new contributions to knowledge on Malaysia. It also signals research that spans comparative studies, involving the Malaysian experience with that of other nations. This series, initiated by the Malaysian Social Science Association (MSSA) to promote study of contemporary and historical issues in Malaysia, and designed to respond to the growing need to publish important research, also serves as a forum for debate on key issues in Malaysian society. As an academic series, it will be used to generate new theoretical debates in the social sciences and on processes of change in this society. The Routledge Malaysian Studies Series will cover a broad range of subjects including history, politics, economics, sociology, international relations, geogra- phy, business, education, religion, literature, culture and ethnicity. The series will encourage work adopting an interdisciplinary approach.

1 The State of Malaysia 4 Health Care in Malaysia Ethnicity, equity and reform The dynamics of provision, financ- Edited by Edmund Terence ing and access Gomez Edited by Chee Heng Leng and Simon Barraclough 2 Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Malaysia 5 Politics in Malaysia An unsung (r)evolution The Malay dimension Cecilia Ng, Maznah Mohamad and Edited by Edmund Terence tan beng hui Gomez

3 Governments and Markets in 6 Privatization in Malaysia East Asia Regulation, rent-seeking and policy The politics of economic crises failure Jungug Choi Jeff Tan 7 The State, Development and 8 Race and Multiculturalism in Identity in Multi-Ethnic Societies Malaysia and Singapore Ethnicity, equity and the nation Edited by Daniel P.S. Goh, Matilda Edited by Nicholas Tarling and Gabrielpillai, Philip Holden and Edmund Terence Gomez Gaik Cheng Khoo Frontispiece: Wong Hoy Cheong, Marriage of a rubber tapper to a girl dressed as the Virgin Mary in a school play (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1994. Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore

Edited by Daniel P.S. Goh, Matilda Gabrielpillai, Philip Holden and Gaik Cheng Khoo First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 selection and editorial matter, Daniel P.S. Goh, Matilda Gabrielpillai, Philip Holden and Gaik Cheng Khoo; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Race and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore / edited by Daniel P.S. Goh ... [et al.]. p. cm. — (Routledge Malaysian studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Malaysia—Race relations. 2. Singapore—Race relations. 3. Cultural pluralism—Malaysia. 4. Cultural pluralism—Singapore. 5. Multiculturalism—Malaysia. 6. Multiculturalism—Singapore. I. Goh, Daniel P.S. DS595.R316 2009 305.89009595—dc22 2008047463 ISBN 0-203-87817-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-48225-9 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-87817-5 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-48225-7 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-87817-0 (ebk) Contents

List of illustrations ix List of contributors x Preface xi List of abbreviations xiii

Introduction: postcoloniality, race and multiculturalism 1 DANIEL P.S. GOH AND PHILIP HOLDEN

PART I Postcolony and cosmopolis 17

1 A literary history of race: reading Singapore literature in English in an historical frame 19 PHILIP HOLDEN

2 Malaysian history textbooks and the discourse of ketuanan Melayu 36 HELEN TING

3 Eyes turned towards China: postcolonial mimicry, transcultural elitism and Singapore Chineseness 53 DANIEL P.S. GOH

4 Pick and mix for a global city: race and cosmopolitanism in Singapore 70 ANGELIA POON viii Contents 5 Makkal Sakthi: the Hindraf effect, race and postcolonial democracy in Malaysia 86 VIJAY DEVADAS

PART II Representing race, performing multiculturalism 105

6 Reading the films of independent filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad: cosmopolitanism, Sufi Islam and Malay subjectivity 107 GAIK CHENG KHOO

7 Racial stereotypes in Singapore films: commercial value and critical possibilities 124 KENNETH PAUL TAN

8 The Singapore Indian woman: a symptom in the quest for Chinese identity 141 MATILDA GABRIELPILLAI

9 Deghettoizing subcultures: the multicultural evolution of Mat Rock in Singapore 157 KELLY FU SU YIN AND LIEW KAI KHIUN

10 Bhangra and the reconstruction of ‘Punjabi-ness’ in multiracial Singapore 173 CHARANPAL S. BAL

11 The art of race: rethinking Malaysian identity through the art of Wong Hoy Cheong 191 MICHELLE ANTOINETTE

Conclusion: toward a critical multiculturalism 213 DANIEL P.S. GOH Bibliography 219 Index 236 Illustrations

Figures FP Wong Hoy Cheong, Marriage of a rubber tapper to a girl dressed as the Virgin Mary in a school play (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1994 iv 11.1 Wong Hoy Cheong, In Search of Faraway Places (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1996 195 11.2 Wong Hoy Cheong, Some dreamt of Malaya, some dreamt of Great Britain (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1994 198 11.3 Wong Hoy Cheong, Aspirations of the working class (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1994 201 11.4 Wong Hoy Cheong, Text Tiles (installation view), 2000 204 11.5 Wong Hoy Cheong, Text Tiles (tile detail), 2000 205 11.6 Wong Hoy Cheong, Non-Indigenous Skins, 1998–2000 208 11.7 Wong Hoy Cheong, Indigenous Skins, 1999 209

Table 7.1 Racial stereotypes: four ideal-types 133 Contributors

Michelle Antoinette is a researcher and lecturer in modern and contemporary Asian art, currently based at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Charanpal S. Bal is a Master of Social Sciences (Sociology) graduate from the National University of Singapore. Vijay Devadas is Senior Lecturer of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Kelly Fu Su Yin is a doctoral student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Matilda Gabrielpillai is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Daniel P.S. Goh is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. Philip Holden is Associate Professor in English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore. Gaik Cheng Khoo is Lecturer of Gender, Sexuality and Culture at the School of Humanities, Australian National University. Liew Kai Khiun is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Angelia Poon is Assistant Professor of Literature at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Kenneth Paul Tan is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Helen Ting is Research Fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, National University of Malaysia. Preface

Multiculturalism is grounded in multi-sited dialogue between different people that results in serendipitous and educational discoveries. It is thus fitting that this book grew out of multiple conversations among a network of friends and associates in academic fields stretching from Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Canada. When we first met at a workshop on Malaysian literature at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, in October 2004, Gaik Cheng and I had the inaugural conversation over coffee. Fresh from graduate schools in North America and bristling with ideas and experiences relating to multiculturalism, we wanted to bring cultural studies perspectives to bear on age-old problems with different-yet- similar postcolonial trajectories in our home societies. Our conviction, then and now, is that there is an urgent need to think through the racial categories embedded in cultural paradigms inherited from colonial times, which continue to influence policy making, education, public discourse and both academic and everyday knowledge of the worlds we live in. In subsequent conversations, in the first half of 2005, we pulled in Matilda and Philip to form a nucleus for a book project. Then, in a series of ripples of conversations moving out from the nucleus, we gathered a group of young scholars engaging in the interrogation of race and multiculturalism in very different research areas and from different disciplinary perspectives, who would otherwise have little chance or reason to interact with each other, whether face-to-face or virtually via emails. The conversations were most intense between the editors themselves who often debated their differing views on individual pieces. Two editors reviewed each piece, and the review process spurred many debates, with non-reviewing editors jumping into the fray. In the negotiations over revision, contributing authors debated with editors and the conversations sometimes seem to be spinning out of control. And just as we thought we had it all pinned down, Terence Gomez’s incisive comments set off further conversations. Many of the insights resulting from these conversations found their way into the introduction to the book, if not into the essays themselves. The result is a book that departs from the usual edited volume of stand-alone essays. Instead, this book reads like an extended dialogue between twelve academics with a coherent trajectory of thought, as though the different threads of conversations acted as the various forces that create a trajectory. Considered together, the essays here are not only interdisciplinary and comparative across Malaysia and Singapore, xii Preface but also raise important implications about the multiple ways we think, talk and perform race and multiculturalism within our own society or across the Straits of Johor. We hope the reader, when reading across the essays, will find new insights that each essay cannot possibly exhaust. Acknowledgement is due to the friends and associates with whom we had enriching conversations concerning the project, a few of whom were potential contributors who left the project because of other commitments. This includes David C.L. Lim, who contributed to the conversations that led to this book. I am grateful to my co-editors for their commitment to the tedious process of reviewing at least half of the essays in the collection each, and especially for going beyond this duty in many instances to discuss and debate each other’s review and the book’s very conceptualisation. I am very appreciative of Terence Gomez’s incisive review of the manuscript, which has substantially improved individual essays while tighten- ing the overall argumentative thrust of the book. I am also grateful to Wong Hoy Cheong for generously permitting us to reproduce his artwork. Finally, I thank my friends and colleagues at the National University of Singapore, particularly my co- editor Philip, Chua Beng Huat, Eric Thompson, Kenneth Paul Tan, Anne Raffin, Lian Kwen Fee and many others at the Department of Sociology, for their generous support of my work in the past three years, which has allowed me to push through this project beyond ultimately ephemeral conversations to their archived record. I hope this spells the beginnings of new conversations extending the horizons of our intertwined multiculturalisms.

D. G. Abbreviations

BN Barisan Nasional (National Front) CC Community Centres CMIO Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others DAP Democratic Action Party HDB Housing Development Board MCA Malaysian Chinese Association MCP Malayan Communist Party MIC Malaysian Indian Congress MPAJA Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army NEP New Economic Policy PAP People’s Action Party PAS Parti Islam Semalaysia UMNO United Malays National Organization

Introduction Postcoloniality, race and multiculturalism

Daniel P.S. Goh and Philip Holden

Multiculturalism as postcolonial culture Attention to the postcolonial nation-states of Singapore and Malaysia in the international media frequently focuses on two apparently mutually contradictory areas. In economic terms, the two countries are frequently praised as success stories of modernization; in cultural terms, they are often seen as falling away from the principles of liberal democracy that are taken as representative of modernity. In the last few years, for instance, media coverage of Malaysia’s planned coast-to-coast oil pipeline and Singapore’s integrated resort developments has alternated with accounts of the failure of a Muslim convert to Christianity to have her case heard by a Malaysian civil court and Singapore’s use of sedition laws against bloggers who posted racist remarks online. Yet what if these economic and cultural elements, rather than being profoundly and puzzlingly opposed to each other, were in fact closely related; if the conditions for existence of the developmental state in each country were profoundly shaped by a racial governmentality? Such a realization asks us to reconsider the manner in which multiculturalism as a global phenomenon has been discussed in much recent literature. In the last fifty years much attention has been given to the recognition and problematization of cultural difference within the framework of the nation-state. Former metropolitan colonial powers have belatedly realized the central place of cultural diversity in their polities, while newly independent states have often needed to devise nationalisms that acknowledge the many overlapping cultural communities that exist in a single national space. Academic and popular discourse has tended to separate these two experiences, tagging the former as the issue of multiculturalism (Goldberg 1994a) while treating the latter as the problem of ethnic pluralism and ethnonationalism (Brown 1994), despite the fact that both have similar origins in what we call colonial race/culture, and both confront colonial race/culture’s postcolonial consequences. This division between multiculturalism and ethnonationalism, indeed, promotes a binary division based on Orientalist positive and negative valences. In this book, in examining Singapore and Malaysia as examples of non- Western multiculturalisms, we thus recast the problem of pluralism as a question of multiculturalism comparable to its Western counterpart. In reading Singaporean and Malaysian multiculturalism, we need to show cau- tion over some of the premises of previous work on multiculturalism, consequences 2 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden of the practice V.J. Mishra (2002: 199) has characterized as ‘a tendency to read multiculturalism as a purely Western phenomenon requiring urgent academic analysis and attention in the context of a largely post-1965 immigration of non-white peoples into Western nation-states.’ Thus much critical discussion of multiculturalism in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia in recent years has utilized Martin Barker’s (1981: 3) notion of a ‘new racism’, in which the ‘apparently innocent language’ of culture replaces essentialized biologisms at the surface of racial discourses: the target of racism become lifestyle ‘choices’, ethnicity, or immigration, rather than directly articulated references to race itself. Yet in postcolonial societies such as Singapore and Malaysia ‘race’ itself is a category openly made use of by the state apparatus. As Chua Beng Huat (2005) reminds us in his discussion of communitarian multiculturalism in Singapore, the various questions raised by multiculturalism for those of us working, studying and living in postcolonial societies are not simply concerned with the squaring of liberalism with cultural diversity. In order to explore the social questions raised by Singaporean and Malaysian multiculturalism, we need first to explore and identify the characteristics of what we might call postcolonial multiculturalism, as differentiated from Western multiculturalism in various liberal manifestations. An initial approach might thus be to review literature on Singaporean and Malaysian multiculturalism. Ours is not the first book that attempts to specify the difference between Western and postcolonial multiculturalism, especially with regards to multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia, since these two countries have been touted as the most successful of postcolonial states in managing ethnic differences and conflicts. The collections of essays edited by Robert Hefner (2001) and Will Kymlicka and Baogang He (2005) are landmark works in this respect. Hefner’s collection is particularly postcolonial in orientation; it grounds the inves- tigation of multiculturalism in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in the production and reproduction of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial pluralisms, with special reference to J.S. Furnivall’s (1948) founding work on ethnic pluralism and state policy in the Southeast Asian region. The essays in Kymlicka and He’s collection deal more with the neo-liberal present, but the two collections share a focus on the public character of multiculturalism, or the cluster of issues and questions around what Kymlicka (1998) has called ‘multicultural citizenship’. In both collections the shadow of the challenge to neo-liberalism posed by ‘Asian values’ hovers in the background, because their overall approaches to postcolonial multiculturalism still take their theoretical cues, if not a complete conceptual apparatus, from liberal considerations of multiculturalism. In contrast, this collection here seeks to interrogate multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia from the theoretical angles of cultural studies and postcolonial theory. We see this strategy as complementary to rather than conflicting with the work the other collections have done, since understanding the postcolonial cultural logics of state multiculturalism in the two nation-states allows us to better discern the conditions of possibility of politics, liberal or otherwise. The common problem the essays collected here engage with is the manifestation of state multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia that have institutionalized Introduction 3 colonial racial identities and woven them into the fabric of political and social life to the extent that they constitute a common sense through which people conceive identities of themselves and others. There is, however, a growing sense in these societies that such a multiculturalism imposes limits upon the recognition and interrogation of cultural difference, in turn raising a key postcolonial question pertaining to multiculturalism: can we think beyond the terms and categories set by the white colonialists to know, conquer and rule the ‘natives’, to understand ourselves and the societies in which we live? In answering this question, we might first take a cue from Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. Taylor (1994) asserts that the ethics of recognition and respect for multicultural difference require that we approach the identities of others with the presumption of equal value and worth that we accord our own identities. Making this presumption, Taylor points out, does not prevent us from ultimately judging the identities of others as not equivalent to our own. But in the interest of securing recognition for non-hegemonic cultures, Taylor asks that both public and private judgements of the relative value of cultures be made in the light of non-ethnocentric criteria which look to all the horizons of the different cultures in question. This does not preclude a state from committing to support particular cultures for which the community has expressed preference or when preservation of such cultures is considered a moral necessity or good. To enable free discourse which maintains non-ethnocentric criteria, however, Taylor argues that state support of selected cultures can be justified only as long as the fundamental rights of citizens with commitments to other cultures or no commitments at all are protected. Applying Taylor’s perspective to postcolonial contexts evokes intriguing questions. State multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia has created possibilities and openings in the politics of recognition, but has closed off many others. The institutionalization of identities has foreclosed commitments to cultures other than the official categories of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others (CMIO) inherited from the British colonial administration. Furthermore, in stressing the primacy of race in cultural affiliation, state multiculturalism is unable to accord recognition to other foci of cultural identity, and also denies the possibility of not committing to any essential cultural identity. Within the bound of these racial categories of ‘local’ culture, the presumption of equal value is implicitly already made. Possibilities of questioning the relative value of cultural practices or forms, or of expanding contemporary cultural horizons in response to changing social contexts, are foreclosed in the interest of maintaining racial tolerance and harmony between communities conceived of as equal but essentially different. Genuine respect and appreciation arising from intercultural dialogue thus may be frequently precluded. Taylor’s perspective also allows us to make an approach towards the ethics of the state’s commitment to promoting a constructed Chinese majoritarian culture in Singapore and Malay cultural primacy in Malaysia at the level of public policy, a consequence of the politics of decolonization driven by the momentum of colonial policies and anti-colonial politics. We might question whether such a practice contradicts the presumption of the equal worth of the recognized races, and whether the implicit argument that the promotion of such culture is a collective cultural good and 4 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden preference is sufficiently compelling as to permit the state intervention which Taylor associates with claims of special treatment. It is clear from this preliminary consideration of multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia through the lens of Taylor’s liberal multiculturalism that the coding of colonial race/culture in the state has not disappeared with decolonization. As we have indicated earlier, however, there are limits to a simple reading of Singaporean and Malaysian multiculturalism as diverging from an idealized and implicitly liberal script. Multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia should thus be read in the historical context of a scripting and re-scripting of colonial and postcolonial cultures. Indeed, it is our conviction that an examination of such scripting may usefully parallel recent critiques of liberal multiculturalism in the West: Sneja Gunew’s discussion of the ‘colonial seeds’ of multiculturalisms in Canada and Australia, for example (2004: 33–50), or Ghassan Hage’s analysis of Australian multiculturalism as complicit with ‘a discourse of internal orientalism’ (1998: 17). This collection of articles thus seeks to reopen for inquiry areas that Western liberal multiculturalism and Asian state multiculturalism have foreclosed. How does state multiculturalism square with the colonial legacies of racializations, racisms and racial cultures? How does state multiculturalism enact historical erasure or ideological validation of specific vernacular multiculturalisms? What forms of critical multiculturalism, if any, might enable a more complex engagement with cultural difference in Singapore and Malaysia? In answering these questions, this book proceeds in two thematic sections, interrogating both governmental structures and social and cultural texts. In discussing the politics of multiculturalism, each essay in this book treats the Malaysian and Singaporean governments, civil groups, citizens and residents as postcolonial actors. What this means is that these social actors find themselves in an inextricable, and perhaps unfortunate, position in which they have no choice but to negotiate the colonial legacies of racialization and transform them into postcolonial multiculturalisms. In such a situation, the simple appeal to a race-blind liberalism is not an effective counter-hegemonic or oppositional strategy. The racializations, having formed the field of discursive knowledge and action, cannot be wished away and have to be engaged by social actors who seek political credibility, or simply, meaningful identities for themselves. What this means here is that it is important for us to plot the genealogy of multiculturalisms in Singapore and Malaysia in terms of racial governmentality in order to contextualize the essays that follow.

Postcolony: racial governmentality and multiculturalism The creation of a colonial plural society, in which a ‘medley’ of different cultural communities each held ‘its own religion, its own culture, its own ideas and ways’, meeting ‘only as individuals in the market place in buying and selling’ (Furnivall 1948: 304), was certainly a project of British colonialism. Town planning in the early years of British settlement in Singapore (established 1819) famously racialized urban space: the ethnic areas of Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam were each assigned to Chinese, Indian and Malay communities respectively, even if Introduction 5 this division emerged through the convergence of the actions of many agents rather than, as is commonly supposed, the fiat of Singapore’s ‘founder’ Stamford Raffles (Chew 1991: 38). When the British penetrated into the Malay states from the 1870s onwards and began their programme of developing the peninsular hinterland, these racializations were articulated in the political economy of the division of labour. Thus Chinese were placed as commercial middlemen aliens, Malays and Indonesian migrants confined to the fields as indigenous peasant smallholders, and the Indians imported as municipal and plantation labourers. Racial governmentality thus extended into many areas of colonial rule. Charles Hirschman (1986: 356) has plotted the gradual hardening of racial categories under colonialism in Malaya and the Straits Settlements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its association with a mode of government in which new immigrant communities were ‘segregated geographically, socially and economically from the local (Malay) population’; indeed, many cultural stereotypes of ethnic populations now firmly embedded in the public imagination prove to have their roots in the colonial order of things. Hirschman has also shown how in colonial Malaya and the Straits Settlements the census was used as an element of classification and governance. Early censuses indicate the difficulties in imposing a controlling grid on a hybrid and fluid social reality: they use the term ‘nationalities’ rather than ‘race’, have little sense of hierarchical order, and seem confused about the status of cultural groups such as ‘Jews’. It was not until the 1891 Straits Settlements census that the overarching categories of Malay, Chinese and Indian were first used (Hirschman 1987: 569). Classificatory difficulties apparently persisted: indeed, Hirschman notes regular complaints by colonial officials that the ‘difficulty of achieving anything like a scientific or logically consistent classification is enhanced by the fact that most Oriental peoples themselves have no clear conception of race’ (C.A. Vlieland, quoted in Hirschman 1987: 564–5); ‘race’ here is an externally imposed lens through which colonialism viewed its subjects. Such racial classification was common under European colonialisms. Benedict Anderson (1991: 163) has, indeed, famously enumerated three key institutions that ‘profoundly shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion’, which were then taken over by the new national state: the census, the map, and the museum. This enumeration of distinct communities was not invented by colonial power, of course, but rather built on and radically transformed pre-existent social imaginaries: in India, for instance, a parallel fixing occurred through the colonial state’s use of the grid of ‘caste’. Arjun Appadurai (1996: 125) has noted a shift in the use of such classificatory mechanisms from ‘a functional use of number’ under earlier colonialism to a ‘more pedagogical and disciplinary role’ in later colonial polities, which stressed ‘the creation of new kinds of self by officially enforced activities’. Colonial subjects in Singapore thus increasingly addressed the state through race or religious community, through mediating organizations such as the Chinese Advisory Board and the Muslim Advisory Board. Even in the Malayan spring fostered by the British colonial state before the Malayan Emergency immediately after the Second World War, the established racial classifications were employed as the foundational stilts on which a new multiracial but Anglo-centric 6 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden Malayan identity was based. As T.N. Harper (1999) shows, while this new colonial project was defeated by the alternative Malayan nationalisms rising from popular politics, the ideological devices used by the British colonial state were important legacies utilized by the nationalists who inherited them. As Partha Chatterjee’s recent work has demonstrated, colonialism’s racial governmentality was something that could not easily be left behind by the new national state. After independence, Chatterjee (2004: 37) notes, ‘caste and religion in India, ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, and tribes in Africa remained the dominant criteria for identifying populations as objects of policy’; if anti-colonial nationalism often initially opposed the racial classifications of colonial governance, it also found that they were too deeply embedded to cast aside. The exact manner in which the racial governmentality of the colonial state was taken up by the Labour Front administration from 1955 to 1959 in Singapore, and the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) after 1957 in Malaysia, and the People’s Action Party (PAP) after 1959 in Singapore, remains to be studied. In part it persisted; the ‘cultural shows’ of the early 1960s, for instance, involved each racialized community enacting a cultural performance for an audience of all citizens. In part it was downplayed, or subsumed into a larger, imagined Southeast Asian community. There was some idealism in this: figures in the new PAP administration from 1959 onwards hoped for a gradual decline in racial identification, and an increased Malayan, then Malaysian, and finally Singaporean consciousness. Yet there were also pragmatic reasons: Singapore did, after all, leave the Malaysian Federation in 1965 in part because its leaders’ vision of a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ of nominally equal, if not racially unmarked, citizens crashed headlong into the National Front ethnic corporatist compact led by UMNO. Even the UMNO-led compact in Malaysia, vilified by the PAP as a narrow vision of ‘Malay Malaysia’, was not as racialized as it was made out to be in this period. The political compact between the various parties in the National Front, including the largest ethnic-based parties, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), meant that the position and interests of the non-Malay minorities were recognized and integrated into a party coalition that resembled a movement to build a multiracial nation, and was thus not entirely unlike the PAP. The differences between the PAP and the Front were that the coalition held on to the nominal belief of Malay primacy for politically exigent reasons and the coalition formalized politics along hardened ethnic lines, though the latter was balanced by the presence of transethnic parties in the Front. These differences were initially academic, but mattered when the PAP and the Front competed for political dominance after the merger in 1963. Cultural differences and racial beliefs easily became the battlefield on which political competition was wrought, culminating in the ‘race’ riots of 1964 in both countries, ‘separation’ in 1965 and worse riots in Malaysia in 1969. Despite the political turmoil of the 1960s, many middle-class Singaporeans and Malaysians who grew up in the 1960s and early 1970s now remember a time when race was a less overt category of governance. It was not until the 1980s that many of the structures of contemporary racial governmentality in Singapore emerged: Introduction 7 the tightened bilingual education policy, ethnic self-help groups, and the Speak Mandarin Campaign targeted at Chinese Singaporeans. Likewise, Malaysians did not experience the full force of the New Economic Policy initiatives until the late 1970s when government policies favouring bumiputera (lit. ‘sons of the soil’) economic and educational achievements attained institutional traction. The problems faced in Malaysia are not with the progressive social justice ideals of ‘affirmative action’ favouring Malays, but rather with the racial underpinnings of the New Economic Policy, which institutionally entrenched and gave political credence to the hitherto muted ideology of Malay primacy or ketuanan Melayu. The latter was the postwar rendition of the constitutional fiction of British ‘protection’ of the Malay sultanates by conservative Malay nationalists. While ketuanan Melayu was toned down during the road to independence in 1957 and after, due to the political pragmatics and transethnic ideals of accommodating the large minority of Chinese and Indians, it began to creep into Malay elite political discourse after the 1969 riots. Likewise, in Singapore difficulties are less with communitarian ideals per se than with the implications involved in composing nation-wide communitarianisms along colonial racial lines. Here, the Straits Chinese ideology of virtuous modern-day Confucianism functions as a muted elite discourse for racially unifying and culturally uplifting the diverse Chinese majority in Singapore. Thus in both countries, ‘race’ is foregrounded as the primary mode of group affiliation in opposition to that promoted by the state. The elevation of the riots of 1964 and 1969 to the status of national traumas justifies policies of multiracialism, inscribing a belief in the primordiality of racial conflict deep in the national psyches of the two countries and erasing the political contingencies that led to the events in the first place – remembering the riots as essentially ‘racial’ riots has very different consequences than understanding them as political events. This brief historical sketch reminds us of the complexity of racial formations and negotiations with them. As Ann Laura Stoler (2002: 376–7) notes, too much research has focused simply on how racism advances ‘conservative political agendas’, yet, as our history shows, ‘racial discourses can and do harness themselves with frequent success to progressive ones’ such as anti-colonial nationalism. Conversely, as we will see in the studies of the Straits Chinese and the postcolonial ruling elites of the two countries in the essays here, attempts to conceive of communities beyond race have often been associated with social conservatism. Progressive anti-colonial nationalism may, and often indeed did, regress into a hegemonic conservatism after the hopeful fires of independence were extinguished by the task of pragmatic national development in a hostile global context framed by the Cold War. But the neo-colonial global environment is not the singular source of problems for the nascent postcolonial state. As Chatterjee (1993) has argued, the inheritance of the colonial state meant that its modular nationalism encoded with racial governmentality suppressed alternative visions of nationhood that challenged the Western colonial model. In other words, race became the meme through which the postcolonial state sought to build the nation to ‘survive’ in the merciless global environment. The task of undoing the warp and weft of racial governmentality is thus a difficult one, and needs patience and precise historical knowledge. 8 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden If the sense of the past inflects the state of our being in the present, then historical consciousness plays a major part in the formation of our identities and the definition of multicultural possibilities. The question for postcolonial nations is which history out of the many imagined and alternative histories should become official History writ large (Chatterjee 1993: 95–115), in which ‘affective narratives of human belonging’ (Chakrabarty 2000: 71) become the sentimental grounds for building the new nation. This is a theme that the essays by Philip Holden (Chapter 1) and Helen Ting (Chapter 2) tackle in their close reading of literary writings and history textbooks respectively. Their conclusions are bleak. The nation and its narration (Bhabha 1990) seem to be ensnared in the colonial political unconscious of racial primordialism. Unable to successfully disarticulate colonial race/culture or to critically transgress racial boundaries, national consciousness in both countries remains resolutely postcolonial, unable to shake the hardened CMIO racializations and their ideological figurations. As a result, the ketuanan Melayu ideology has survived to combine constructed indigenity and political primacy in the figure of the bumiputera Malay, while Straits Chinese Confucianism has revived to combine modernity and political virtuosity in the figure of the junzi (the righteous and cultivated man) Chinese, both figures dominating as first-among-equals in the racial governmentality of multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore.

Cosmopolis: Asian capitalism and neoliberal multiculturalism By the 1990s, however, Malaysian and Singaporean multiculturalisms had to respond to a changing world order. The economic imperatives for developmental states were transformed as the end of the Cold War unleashed the forces of economic and political liberalization, often simply described as ‘globalization’. The Singaporean and Malaysian governments crafted strategic plans in 1991 and 1995 respectively to deal with the challenges, key among which was the need to maintain the momentum of rapid development (and the political legitimacy derived from it) in a changing competitive landscape. Given their political role, the strategic plans were not merely economic. Importantly, both governments saw the renewal of sociocultural engineering as necessary in order to meet the new challenges. In many ways this represented a creative adaptation of the postcoloniality of colonial race/ culture in order to assuage social changes caused by the economic discontinuities of neoliberalism. One aspect of this postcolonial continuity was the revival of ‘culture’ as a descriptor within the discourse of multiculturalism as the trope for nation building and citizen making. In line with this development, cosmopolitanism was later articulated as the identity of the ideal mobile citizen who thrives in what the Comaroffs (2000: 292) call ‘millennial capitalism’, a capitalism that presents itself as a ‘gospel of salvation’, ‘that if rightly harnessed, is invested with the capacity wholly to transform the universe of the marginalized and disempowered’. Singapore’s 1991 Strategic Economic Plan established the target to ‘catch up’ with the per capita Gross National Product of a ‘first league developed country’ in the years 2020–2030 (Singapore Ministry of Trade of Industry 1991: 40). Introduction 9 However, such aspirations were not simply to be measured quantitatively: four additional qualitative elements were foregrounded as crucial to making Singapore ‘a developed country in every sense’. Leaving aside ‘economic dynamism’, the three elements important to our discussion were stated as ‘national identity’, ‘quality of life’ and ‘a global city’. The task of ‘national identity’ involved ‘developing a sense of common identity and shared purpose among all Singaporeans’ (ibid.: 42). In the economic sphere of relations between labour, business and government, this translated to the cultivating of ‘values which emphasize the importance of national teamwork’, ‘practising the consensus principle’ and ‘discouraging class distinctions’ (ibid.: 55). These objectives cohere with the discourse of ‘Asian values’ articulated in the aftermath of the 1987–1988 ‘Marxist conspiracy’ crackdowns and formalized in the 1991 National Ideology legislation on Singapore’s ‘shared values’, which emphasized the general will of the community and consensual politics over liberal rights and individual interests. The other two elements logically followed the founding of a strong national identity and values: ‘quality of life’ was defined as ‘a cultivated society’ of ‘individuals who are well informed, refined, gracious and thoughtful and a place where ideas, art, literature and music flourish’ (ibid.: 43), while ‘a global city’ would be built that expressed ‘an openness to foreigners and foreign culture, without eroding Singapore’s own values’ (ibid.: 57). In sum, the vision of the Strategic Economic Plan imagines Singapore as a utopian cosmopolis filled with citizens fulfilling their individual dreams, and yet coming together in multicultural harmony to enjoy the surplus value of global capitalism. It might be felt that such changes would weaken the purchase of the communitarian governmentality of multiracialism, and indeed some recent developments tend to support this. In 2003, Singapore’s then Minister for Community Development defined the next phase of social evolution to be a move away from multiracialism, where the right of each ethnic group to exist is recognized in institutional delineations such as the dispensation of state welfare through para-governmental ethnic ‘self-help’ groups, to multiculturalism, where ‘no one can claim to belong to a separate and distinct group or race’, that while ‘one can appreciate and understand much of one’s own heritage’, ‘within every individual there also exist elements and traits reflecting the larger society’ (Yaacob 2003). This new multiculturalism was seen as a logical complement to the ‘evolutionary nature of the process’ developing from nation-building survival to cosmopolitan pluralism, ‘a key feature of the 21st century’ (ibid.). However, this millennial multiculturalism is perhaps less of a new discourse than it initially seems. The trend towards the emphasis on hybridizing multiculturalism cannot simply be described in terms of social evolution in which ‘race’ is left behind, nor of the growing influence of a ‘new racism’ of culture which no longer explicitly articulates ‘race’ as its object. Instead of seeing, and prematurely celebrating, the displacement of race by culture in millennial multiculturalism, we argue that it is important to adopt what Walter Mignolo (2000: 723) calls a ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ to conceive cosmopolitanism historically and geographically from the position of coloniality and the contemporary present of neoliberalism. 10 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden This has important implications for emerging critical studies of neoliberal multiculturalism, which have largely been situated in South American countries. As South American states are inducted into the neoliberal world order of free market democratization, the racist exclusion of indigenous peoples has transformed into a multiculturalism that recognizes and admits cultural rights which do not threaten neoliberal capitalism. The enculturalization of race thus leads to the ideological and institutional elision of class from anti-racism struggles, and therein, reinforces the very class basis of racial dominance and drives the leftward swing of indigenous movements (Hale 2002, 2005; Postero 2006). In this sense, the critique of neoliberal multiculturalism squares with Paul Gilroy’s (2002: 251) criticism of the anti-racism movement of British multiculturalism in the 1980s, which ‘trivializes the struggle against racism and isolates it from other political antagonisms – from the contradiction between capital and labor, from the battle between men and women’. Is millennial multiculturalism in Singapore an ‘Asian’ form of neoliberal multiculturalism, one linked not to dependency and the pact of racial domination over indigenous peoples as in South America, but one linked to the logic of developmental state participation in neoliberal capitalism? How is this neoliberal multiculturalism articulated with the racial governmentality of postcolonial multiculturalism? These are the issues that engage Angelia Poon and Daniel Goh respectively in their complementary essays. Goh examines the ‘cultivated society’ element of Singapore’s cosmopolitanism by looking at the historical development of the ruling elite’s claim to transcultural authority from Straits Chinese postcolonialities (Chapter 3), while Poon deconstructs the notion of the ‘global city’ by looking at the ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1999) multiculturalism of the Singapore state’s racially selective biculturalism and immigration policies (Chapter 4). Together, the two essays look at the location of Singapore in what Donald Nonini and Aihwa Ong (1997) call the ‘chronotopes of modern Chinese transnationalism’ in the neoliberal capitalism of the Asia–Pacific zone, in which transcultural mobility equates to power and (racialized) localization is required in the production of disciplined subjects granted uneven cultural rights in flexible ‘Asian’ neoliberal multiculturalism. The Sixth Malaysia Plan, which outlined the economic programme for the years 1991 to 1995, matched Singapore’s Plan in its vision of transforming Malaysia into ‘a fully developed country’ by the year 2020. Indeed, in his oft-quoted speech out- lining Wawasan 2020 (Vision 2020), then Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad’s definition of ‘fully developed’ exceeded Singapore’s with no less than eight cultural goals in addition to economic dynamism. These included the founding of a ‘psychologically liberated’, ‘scientific and progressive’, ‘economically just’, and – in what sounds like liberal multiculturalism – a ‘liberal and tolerant’ society ‘in which Malaysians of all colours and creeds’ would be ‘free to practise and profess their customs, cultures and religious beliefs’. Of special interest to Malaysian citizens, especially non-Malay minorities in the country, was the vision of establishing ‘a united Malaysian nation’ made up of ‘one Bangsa Malaysia’, or a ‘Malaysian race’ (Malaysia Office of the Prime Minister 1991). According to the 2000 Census, 65.1 per cent of Malaysians were bumiputera (Malays and indigenous peoples), Introduction 11 26 per cent Chinese and 7.7 per cent Indians (Malaysia Department of Statistics, 6 November 2001). In the context of the revival of the ketuanan Melayu ideology, the entrenched institutionalization of Malaysian electoral politics along racial party lines, and the rise of ketuanan Islam as UMNO attempted to meet the challenge of the opposition Parti Islam Semalaysia (PAS), the notion of melding the Malaysian people into a Bangsa Malaysia was a radical idea. As in the case of Singapore, we might wonder whether cosmopolitanism has begun to displace colonial race/culture, and multiculturalism begun to replace multiracialism in Malaysia. Likewise, it is equally possible that millennial multiculturalism in Malaysia is underpinned by a transnational logic that, rather than displacing race, rearticulates it as culture in a neoliberal context. The events tracked by Ting (Chapter 2) and Gaik Cheng Khoo (Chapter 6) in this collection suggest that the current situation is bleak, with Malay primacy and Islamicization of state discourse and institutions, ketuanan Melayu and ketuanan Islam, forming the twin obstacles to the development of Bangsa Malaysia, which in any case is suspect for being an Asian form of neoliberal multiculturalism, as Michelle Antoinette discusses in Chapter 11. However, the situation in Malaysia is different from that in Singapore because the less centralized character of state and society in the former allows for power arbitrage between autonomous cultural spaces, spheres of life and social institutions. Thus, in highly centralized Singapore contradictions and tensions appear within the framework of state discourse and policy, but Malaysian society is characterized by what Nonini (1997: 222) describes as ‘imaginaries of desire in tension with cascades of symbolic violence’ across different cultural and institutional scales, where the transnational mobility and power of one group is achieved by localizing and disciplining another group into a bounded place. In this sense, cosmopolitanism is a zero-sum game and multiculturalism the compact under which the different racial groups learn to play by the rules of the neoliberal game. But the rules have increasingly been put into question. The Hindraf protest movement erupted in 2007, sparked by a series of state-sanctioned encroachments on the rights of Indian Malaysians to practise Hinduism, and demolitions of Hindu temples. The grievances of Indian Malaysians over their economic and political marginalization in the zero-sum game of Malaysian ‘cosmopolitan’ development that poured forth afterwards highlighted the injustice of the rules of the ‘multicultural’ social compact, to which the state was only able to respond with water cannons and extra-judicial detentions. As Vijay Devadas show in his analysis of the weblog responses to what has been called ‘the Hindraf effect’ in Chapter 5, the transfiguration of Malay-dominated multiracialism to a neoliberal Bangsa Malaysia multiculturalism has broken down to reveal the deep racializations that fracture Malaysian society, pitting strong Indian racialism against ketuanan Melayu and ketuanan Islam counter-responses. However, Devadas hedges his bet on a third orientation that seems to push beyond ‘religious belonging and racial right’ toward a counter-politics of border-crossing cosmopolitanism. The balance of politics-as-usual and the counter-politics of border-crossing was so vividly seen in the watershed 2008 general elections, in which the opposition alliance beat back 12 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden the Barisan Nasional (BN) machine to the point of a precarious majority in the biggest upset for the ruling party. Both the Hindraf effect and political weblogging were seen as major factors in the upset. The opposition alliance itself is what many consider an ‘unholy’ alliance between the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP), the Islamist PAS and the reformist Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party) led by Anwar Ibrahim. It is ‘unholy’ precisely because such a combination was previously unimaginable within the rules of the now-imploding ‘multicultural’ compact.

Representing race, performing multiculturalism Like Devadas, many authors see cosmopolitan possibilities in Malaysia. Joel Kahn (2006: 169–72, 162), for instance, has argued counter-intuitively that Malay culture represents the epitome of Peranakan hybridity and cultural ‘de-territorialization’. In his reading of P. Ramlee’s movie Penarik Beca (Trishaw Driver), Kahn sees Ramlee portraying ‘examples of pure Malay culture, uncontaminated by colonial influence’ that turn out ‘themselves to be hybridized forms’ (ibid.: 163). Thus, instead of locating Malayness in essentialist colonial race/culture, Kahn sees Malayness as evolving from a history of cultural interactions with itinerant trad- ers, settlers and colonialists, both Asian and European. It is the recognition of this hybridity that makes peaceful social interaction with other cultures possible and a liberating vernacular cosmopolitanism (Pollock 2000) thus achievable. As Kahn’s analysis of Ramlee’s films suggests, in order to recognize this hybridity we have to leave the domain of state discourse to look closely at the representations and performativity of racial identities and multiculturalism in cultural practices. Following Kahn’s lead, the next section of this collection moves away from racial governmentality, to interrogate racial representations in the mass media and the vernacular multiculturalisms of cultural performances. Racial governmentality does not disappear from the picture but instead casts a wide shadow. Recent studies of multiculturalism in Singapore have single-mindedly focused on representations and practices of state agencies, with the important theme that vernacular differences have been disciplined by racial governmentality (PuruShotam 1998; Kong and Yeoh 2003; Goh 2005). The essays in the second section of this book look instead at the representations and practices of autonomous individuals and groups who are non-state actors. This does not mean that the book is structured by a simple dichotomous logic of subaltern practices opposing the racial governmentality of state multiculturalism. Instead, we are concerned with the complexities that emerge from the intercultural interactions between different disciplined subjects on the ground in the context of engagement with state multiculturalism. These complexities are infused with contradictory and differentiated power relationships between the disciplined subjects themselves and between the subjects and the state, and thus they also afford the analyst multiple positions to approach vernacular multicultural practices. The first three essays consider filmic and literary texts. The key consideration here is the interculturality of representations. In fact, the three essays here Introduction 13 emphasize three different interculturalities, the sum of which complicates the positive portrayal of intercultural dialogue and its possibilities by scholars defending liberal multiculturalism against critics who see its cultural particularism as incompatible with liberal democracy (Parekh 2000). Khoo’s essay on the films of Yasmin Ahmad continues the theme of cosmopolitanism tackled by Poon (Chapter 4), but places it in the Malaysian context of rising ketuanan Islam ideology (Chapter 6). Here, Khoo deepens Kahn’s proposal concerning cosmopolitan Malayness. She thus sees Yasmin’s portrayals of intimate inter-ethnic relations and Malay cultural hybridity, particularly the emphasis on Sufi Islamic elements, as not only deconstructive of racial essentialisms but also as exemplifying a transcending interculturalism that includes occluded Chinese elements and thus irritates the Malay cultural elites. Kenneth Paul Tan’s counterpart essay on Singapore films takes a different position (Chapter 7). While Khoo favours a cosmopolitan anti-essentialism that debunks racial stereotypes, Tan points to the transformative possibilities of the critical usage of unpleasant intercultural racial images – the racist stereotypes and attitudes the ethnic groups have towards one another – because society is then confronted with the reality of persistent intercultural racializations hidden by the state fantasy of neoliberal multiculturalism. Matilda Gabrielpillai’s psychoanalytic approach in the third essay offers a third position on interculturality (Chapter 8). She registers a discomfort at emancipatory efforts to deconstruct and denaturalize racial identities, when the female and Indian body is a hypersexual symbol that condenses mainstream anxieties and insecurities concerning Chinese identity and inter-racial intimacies. Here, the Indian woman stereotype does not offer cosmopolitan possibilities or phantasmically mask realities, but rather resolves the anxieties induced by dominant Chinese discourse while remaining innocuously or even ludicrously at the margins of realist narratives. Considered together, the three essays on representing race suggest that the representation of any one cultural group is invariably intercultural, always involving the symbolic power relationships between the different groups in society. The cultural artefact, whether visual or textual, is irrevocably caught up in the racialized networks of exchange and exploitation that link up localities of production and oppression (Gilroy 1993; Shohat and Stam 1994). The interculturality of the artefact, as Mary Louise Pratt (1992) influentially argues, is produced in the cultural contact zones where the ethnography of the other meets the other’s auto-ethnography in the process of ‘transculturation’. As Bhabha (1994) tells us, calling these contact zones the in-between ‘third space’ of culture, the newness of the interculturality emerges from incomplete translatability of one culture into the other, when the ethnography of the other fails to capture fully the semantic load of the other’s auto-ethnography. In Malaysia and Singapore, the contact zones are defined by the CMIO interstices of racial governmentality that have only lately been whitewashed by neoliberal multiculturalism. While emphasizing interculturality recovers multiculturalism from its critics in Western scholarship, the interrogation of interculturality in the three essays here, even as they take up different analytical positions, show that the other’s auto-representation in the consumer spaces opened up by the cultural commodity flows of neoliberal capitalism have begun to challenge state 14 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden multiculturalism. The state representation of the CMIO other falters and fails to fully represent the other’s auto-representation. As a result, interesting new identities, too young and fluid to have proper names, have taken root in the textual and filmic representations of independent cultural producers. We can only grapple with them in their intercultural ambiguity, as Khoo has with Chinese-Malay intimacies in Yasmin’s films through the inflections of Sufism (Chapter 6) and Gabrielpillai with Chinese-Catholic-Malay-Peranankan-Indian-Eurasian hybridities in Fiona Cheong’s novel through fragmented female identities and ghosts (Chapter 8). The grappling with the interculturality of new identities takes on a greater vivid urgency when we move from representations of racial identities in film and literature to musical and artistic practices of these identities. One of the problems with Taylor’s multiculturalism, which we used to introduce the questions this book is concerned with, is his assumption that the scripting of modern identities is a privately given fact. As Kwame Anthony Appiah (1994: 155) notes in his response to Taylor, ‘We do make choices, but we do not determine the options among which we choose’, so that we are left with the choice of negative or positive scripts attached to particular identities. But if ‘identity is the effect of performance, and not vice versa’, as Vikki Bell (1999: 3) argues using the insights of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, then we cannot remain simply on the level of representation, or the scripting of identities. We need to study the different ways in which these scripts are lived, and therefore also the improvisations that invariably follow real-life performances with unanticipated consequences for multiculturalism. As Stuart Hall (1992: 257) puts it, ‘Representation is possible only because enunciation is always produced within codes which have a history’. The focus on the performativity of ethnic identities ties in with what Stuart Hall (ibid.) has described as the cultural politics of ‘new ethnicities’, ‘which engages rather than suppresses difference and which depends, in part, on the cultural construction of new ethnic identities’. Here, interculturality is intense and radical, and marks the iterative enunciations of identities in shared social spaces defined by the codes of racial governmentality. It is the performative iteration of these enunciations that open up the possibilities for changing coded identities, whether unconsciously in the Bakhtinian sense of apolitical creolization, or consciously, as in Bhabha’s appropriation of Bakhtin’s notion of intentional hybridization as the enactment of moments of political resistance in the ‘third space’ of culture (Young 1995: 20–5). Either way, the result is the emergence of new ethnicities that confound the CMIO codification of racial governmentality and recover the possibility of ‘transethnic solidarities’ which have been historically erased in the representations of nationalist historiography and racial governmentality in Malaysia (Mandal 2004) – and, one may add, in Singapore too – and doubly erased in the accreted representations of neoliberal multiculturalism in the two countries. In the study of new ethnicities, popular music presents an obvious performative field, especially since it is a cultural form where local histories and traditions meet the ‘international traffic in cultural meanings and meaningful forms’ (Back 1996: 183). Furthermore, popular music is often performed in places that accrue meaning for its practitioners, and sometimes in spaces shared with Introduction 15 other groups of people. It is through this social spatialization, in which a group inevitably rubs shoulders with another, or in which actors may find themselves belonging to two or more groups simultaneously, that the intercultural improvisations and enunciations of identity are manifested. Fu and Liew’s and Bal’s essays tackle this theme of social spatialization and witness popular music as practised by two minority groups in Singapore. Kelly Fu and Liew Kai Khiun write of the de-ghettoization of Mat Rock, a Heavy Metal genre that has been locally adapted by Malay working-class youths to express subcultural identity but has attracted the participation of Chinese fans and bands (Chapter 9). The forces behind this de-ghettoization are the increasing participation of Mat Rock in the international Metal scene and the unanticipated consequences of racial governmentality in actual governmental regulation and co-option, which create new cultural contact zones that challenge ethnic, class and gender boundaries with all the attendant tensions of such interculturality. While Fu and Liew see the de-ghettoization of Mat Rock as an instance of vernacular multiculturalism that disarticulates racial governmentality, Charanpal Bal’s piece looks at the opposite process, where the performance of Bhangra music by Sikh youths re-territorializes Punjabi identity and reinforces CMIO multiracialism (Chapter 10). The driving forces here are not too different from the case of Mat Rock. The international commercialization of Bhangra music, particularly in the British club scene, made the genre available for symbolic consumption and exploitation by Singaporean Punjabi youths. But it is the ambiguous position of the relatively economically privileged Sikhs in the Indian category of racial governmentality that determines the difference. Bal shows that the youths appropriate Bhangra to construct a new Punjabi identity that carves out a distinct racialized identity vis-à-vis Chinese, Malays and Tamils. Juxtaposing the two essays, we see that vernacular multiculturalism can go both ways, oppositional to or complicit with dominant discourses, thus dispelling romantic notions of interculturality or hybridity and affirming the need for combined structural and cultural analyses of the complex ways in which groups work through their marginalization (Gilroy 1991a; Cohen 1999). The last essay in this section, by Michelle Antoinette, returns us to Malaysia through the art of Wong Hoy Cheong (Chapter 11). While colonial visual culture and arts and their Orientalist aestheticization of native societies and natives have been intensively examined (see Hackforth-Jones and Roberts 2005), postcolonial visual culture has been largely neglected by postcolonial studies. The visual arts offer decolonized actors a powerful medium that exploits textual, aural, visual and even tactile imaginaries. Indeed, visual arts are perhaps particularly powerful because colonial race/culture is intractably visual; seeing race involves the seeing of phenotypical colour and features trained by the pictorial representations of native bodies and live performances by native subjects which were commonplace in the expositions popular during the age of empire. The visual arts in the hands of an artist like Wong enable him to take these deposited colonial images and meanings and reposition them in new configurations to pose postcolonial questions of racial and cultural belonging, of historical location and dislocation, of transfigurations of 16 D.P.S. Goh and P. Holden racial representations and enunciations in the neoliberal present. Antoinette’s essay is thus a fitting end-piece that leads back to the questions posed by Holden, Ting, Goh, Poon and Devadas in the first section, tying together the racial governmentality, representation and performativity themes in a tangled web of postcolonial multiculturalism. Part I Postcolony and cosmopolis

1 A literary history of race Reading Singapore literature in English in an historical frame

Philip Holden

This essay seeks to link two cultural phenomena which might seem to bear little relationship to each other: contemporary and historical ‘racial formation’ (Omi and Winant 2002: 124–5) both as a mode of governance and a common-sense feature of everyday life in Singapore, and English-language literary production in the city-state from the nineteenth century onwards. Forms of racial governmentality have been a key element of all successive state apparatuses in Singapore since 1819, from the laissez-faire ‘plural society’ of early colonialism (Furnivall 1948: 304), through the very different developmental projects of late colonial and early national state formation, to Asian values discourse and its successors in the last two decades. Racial governmentality has sought to mould and indeed manufacture ethnicities for pragmatically expressed reasons of state: a fear of inter-communal violence, or the possibility of deculturation. Literature in English in Singapore has, it seems, had little to say about this. For much of Singapore’s history, it has been written by a small elite, and many commentators have noted that through an ideology of humanism, it has been divorced from the political realm and relegated to the sphere of the private and personal (Lim 1989: 524). Worse still, it has at times been seen as bearing the imprint of past or prospective colonialisms. Edwin Thumboo (1978: para. 2), writing in 1978, noted that Singapore writing before 1950 had been marginal because its writers were ‘appendages of metropolitan traditions’ from elsewhere; in this, he followed a broader tradition of cultural critique which saw colonial literatures in English as representing the donning of ‘masks of conquest’ (Viswanathan 1989) or an acceptance of mental colonization (Ngu˜gi˜ 1986). The moment when Singaporean literary production in English might speak usefully of national issues, Thumboo (1978: para. 17) felt, was rapidly passing: much contemporary writing was afflicted with a ‘creeping internationalism of idiom’, in which contemplation of an ‘inner life [was] secured through the apparent exclusion of the larger issues which surround it’. In this view, one form of colonialism was in the process of being replaced by a more sinister neo-colonial order enabled by the processes of globalization. Thumboo’s anxieties, however, may hint at the possibilities of a more affirmative reading of Singaporean literary production in English. In both colonial and post-independence Singapore, literature in English has been culturally ‘out of place’, an interstitial space of intercultural translation which has the potential to 20 P. Holden dislocate the discrete cultural categories on which racial governmentalities are based. In the introductory chapter, we have seen how racial governmentality in Singapore has historically formed culture around discrete racialized communities, ascribing languages and racial pasts, and trimming back the burgeoning of hybrid cultural forms. English was, of course, a colonial language, and continues to be promoted as a language that inducts its speakers into the pleasures of the market and global capitalism. But it is also a language that belongs to no one, that, when spoken by Singaporeans or Singaporeans-to-be, resists racialization. And the nature of the literary text in Singapore may enhance the productive interstitial space of the English language. Literary production is neither totally subservient to nor totally independent of the realities of social power but has relative autonomy from the social fields that surround it. In addition, the act of translation of a polylingual environment into a single written language necessitated in a literary text has the potential to add to this distancing effect. Re-reading literary texts written over a period of more than a century offers the possibility, from our contemporary perspective, of constructing a history of the present, of seeing racial formations in the process of growth, transformation, and decline, and thus of asking questions about the common-sense categories which we inhabit in the present. Contemporary governmental discourse in Singapore regarding literature and the arts, when it moves beyond endorsing them as new industries capable of generating employment and revenue, tends to retreat to a casual humanism which endorses a tradition of literary texts promoting individual self-improvement. The Ministry of Education’s (Curriculum Planning and Development Division 1999: 4) aims for teaching of literature in Singapore, for instance, emphasize aesthetic appreciation in tandem with allowing students, through reading literature, the chance to ‘explore areas of human concern, thus leading to a greater understanding of themselves and others’; similar sentiments regarding the value of literary studies are often articulated in the letters pages of The Straits Times and Today. Yet there is another tradition of looking at the function of literary works. The Russian Formalists, writing from the early twentieth century onwards, saw the primary function of literature as one of ‘defamiliarization’ (Shklovsky 1965: 13). Everyday ‘practical language’, in this account, does not call attention to the process of perception, but rather allows habits of thought to ‘retreat in to the area of the unconsciously automatic’ (ibid.: 11). What Vladimir Shklovsky calls ‘poetical language’ – the language not merely of poetry, but of literary works in general – ‘makes the familiar seem strange’ (ibid.: 13) through a lack of simple referential transparency. The literary work, Shkolvsky notes, aims ‘to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception, because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged’ (ibid.: 12). Formalism as originally expressed seems to offer little prospect of reading literary texts’ engagement with the social, stressing as it does the aesthetic ends of art. Yet the insight concerning defamiliarization was taken up by successive generations of Marxist-influenced practitioners and theorists who were concerned about how literary texts might embody the possibility of social critique. Bertolt Brecht made ‘alienation’ – the intentional distancing of the audience and the encouragement of A literary history of race 21 their critical faculties to question the ideological premises by which they lived their lives – central to his dramatic practice; later theorists such as Louis Althusser would emphasis the relative autonomy of literary texts, as expressions of ideology, from the social structures that surround them. Here the Formalist aesthetic is extended to encompass the social; literature’s slowing down of the act of perception may cause its readers to be distanced from habitual structures of thought, since literary texts ‘mobilize ideological materials in a structure that foregrounds their mutual incompatibility’ (Sprinkler 1999: para. 28). It is this element, perhaps, that gives literary texts from the past their value to a reader from the present. As the history of racialized governmentality in Singapore has shown, literary texts in English have always occupied a position of marginality with reference to the state apparatus. In colonial Singapore, the hybridity of these texts cut across the boundaries of communities which colonial governance sought to inscribe. While frequently politically quiescent in themselves, the texts occupied interstitial zones, and thus asked questions about the limits and indeed contradictions of colonial governance. In the struggle for independence, literary texts in English which seek to express or embody nationalist sentiments again engaged with the contradictions of the rediscovery and invention of a national culture: they make readers aware that nations and nation-states are actively made, national histories actively written, rather than emerging naturally from the vanishing mists of time. In the new political quietism after independence, cultural expression in English which was distinctively Singaporean questioned governmental opposition between ‘deeply held traditions and values’ and ‘the pervasive influence of Western ideas and practices in the modern world’ (Tan 1996: 2). Before we turn to the texts themselves, we need to consider a further point. The translation of a polylingual environment into English – or for that matter, into any of the other languages of literary production in Singapore – automatically introduces a form of displacement that aids defamilarization. Few readers in Singapore, either currently or historically, will be familiar with all the written forms of language in circulation: the different orthographies of English, Malay in its Jawi and Rumi forms, Tamil and other Indian languages written in a variety of Indic scripts, and Chinese. Indeed, the so-called Chinese ‘dialects’ – Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese and others – have no formal written form, and thus strategies must be made to accommodate them in whatever language into which they are transcribed. Multilingual theatre can represent a polylingual environment – although directorial decisions will affect how communication in different languages is mediated to an audience – and film, through subtitles, can both represent the environment and make it transparent to most audience members with a variety of linguistic competences. Literary texts written in a single language, however, must always go through a process of linguistic mediation, which may be either openly displayed or concealed from a reader but will always remain as a foundational feature in the text. 22 P. Holden Before the nation: the fiction of the Straits Chinese Magazine Our first example of Singapore Literature in English consists of a number of short stories which appeared in the quarterly Straits Chinese Magazine in its decade of publication from 1897 to 1907. Nationalist historiography in Singapore has tended to see the Straits Chinese as a compliant elite eventually moved aside by more representative nationalist movements; in the last twenty years this has been coupled with the growth of a heritage industry that fetishizes the ‘golden age’ of hybrid Peranakan culture in the period between the two World Wars. Yet scholars such as Mark Frost and Jürgen Rudolph have emphasized the porosity of the boundaries of this community, and indeed the extent to which it was part of a larger performance of cultural authenticity in the interstices of colonial power. Thus Rudolph (1998: 67) has written of Baba identity as historically situated, moving from a political identity under colonialism to a cultural one in contemporary Singapore. In a complementary manner, Frost (2003: 2) has described the Straits Chinese as a ‘transcultural diaspora’, in the sense that ‘the hybridity or creolization in their domestic lives was carefully separated from their performance of a very Chinese ethnic identity in public’. The Straits Chinese Magazine occupied a peculiar place at the interstices of colonial power. Its editors, Lim Boon Keng and Song Ong Siang, campaigned against instances of racial discrimination, yet they did so within an overall acceptance of the potential ‘impartial administration of justice’ under colonial rule (Straits Chinese Magazine 1905: 6). As Yao Souchou (1999: 117) has noted, much community rhetoric repeated colonial discourse in its construction of a respectable Chinese identity: ‘loyal British Chinese, socially respectable and tradition-bound, could come into being only by their silent referencing to the Other Chinese mired in the world of opium, prostitutes and criminal violence’. Yet such Chinese self- fashioning received scant welcome from the British; in claiming status as British subjects, for instance, or the right to volunteer to bear arms in defence of the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements, the editors of the magazine traversed the boundaries of the colonial plural society. And in thinking of different, if em- bryonic, constructions of community – the initial editorial, for instance, stressed a ‘Straits-born’ identity, while later articles looked at the possibility of an ‘Asiatic’ community – they loosened the categories of racial governmentality. Much of the more politically acerbic writing in the magazine’s pages concentrates on prising apart the nexus of class, race, and citizenship in colonial society. An early editorial, for instance, noted the arbitrariness of racial categories in colonial governance:

A Bengali Babu may claim Aryan kinship, and for all we know may have perhaps purer Aryan blood than those who had ancestors settling and inter- marrying among the primitive savages of the primal forests of Caledonia and Britannia. We write this to show the silliness of making distinctions, so far as loyalty is concerned, among the different races who claim the privileges of a British subject. (Straits Chinese Magazine 1897: 72) A literary history of race 23 The process of strategic reinscription that here converts Celts into ‘primitive savages’ is also exemplified in an article in one of the magazine’s later issues, arguing in support of Indians in what was then the Colony of Transvaal, South Africa. Proposals to eject Indians, the writer notes, now means that ‘the respectable, clean and peaceful Indian trader – a British subject – has no right to reside in the Transvaal, whereas the dirty, lazy and often criminally-inclined Europeans have every right to do so’ (Straits Chinese Magazine 1907: 174). This tactic of placing ideological elements in a new context and illustrating their mutual incompatibility continues in the short fiction published in the magazine. The anonymously authored ‘Rodney’s Salvation’ and Wee Tong Poh’s ‘Is Revenge Sweet?’ both feature Straits Chinese doctors who are more sharp-witted and aware than their European colleagues or patients, while stories such as ‘The President’s Ball’ by ‘T. B. G.’ attempt to appropriate Victorian conventions of gentlemanliness into the hybrid settings of Straits Chinese society, to make affluent Straits Chinese the epitome of an emergent Asian modernity. Yet this is not necessarily a progressive project. The racial stereotypes of colonialism are in fact now reworked in terms of class: the doctor-narrator in ‘Is Revenge Sweet?’ is created not only in relation to the bumbling British Inspector Catspaw of the Gambling Suppression Department, but also to his companion, ‘a Teochew Chinaman, with a cunning and crafty look in his eyes and dressed with bad taste’ (Wee 1900: 100). Similarly, the Straits Chinese narrator’s account, in ‘Lost and Found’, of a ‘half-clad ricksha puller’, who gazes ‘with wondering eyes, while, with his evil- smelling rag usually tied round his neck, he wiped the sweat off his face and body’ (ibid.: 175) endorses class-based ideologies through the deployment of colonial Chinese stereotypes used by officials such as Hugh Clifford (Holden 2000: 53–7). Racialization is directed not only towards Chinese men, but also towards men from other communities. The story by the pseudonymous ‘Datoh’ (1901: 22) entitled ‘Ways and Means’, for instance, describes Nattukottai Chettiar moneylenders as ‘black human bloodsuckers – commonly known as chitties’ whose business lies in ‘in enticing young men’ from the Straits Chinese community away from the path of fiscal prudence and virtue. The superficial ideology appealed to here seems to be a racist focus on skin colour, but it is attached to an underlying discourse of masculine self-control and askesis in which perfected Straits Chinese subjects exert self-discipline, while Indian subjects tempt and seduce (see Gabrielpillai, this volume). A similar racializing framework is also hinted at by a reference to a Malay man in ‘Lost and Found’, who is described as not being up to the job, as a ‘native engineer’ (ibid.: 174). A critical reading of the stories in The Straits Chinese Magazine, however, does offer a contemporary reader in Singapore powerful possibilities for defamiliarization. The magazine had readers at port cities throughout Southeast Asia, and many of them would have themselves been part of other reading communities in Chinese, English or Romanized Malay. Singapore at the end of the nineteenth century was part of an earlier globalization – colonialism – and understanding the manner in which the colonial city was caught in cultural and capital flows can help us look beyond the governmentality of the nation today. We might note that the underlying 24 P. Holden structure in the examples of racial and class stereotyping in the examples above is a binarism which contrasts a perfected, disciplined bourgeois subject, committed to capitalist production, with a racial or class other who cannot become a subject of capital because he is indiscriminating in terms of consumption (‘bad taste’), essentially parasitic (a ‘bloodsucker’) or lacking in self-control. Yet consumption and credit are central to the success of capitalist economy. The binarism between disciplined Chineseness and softer racial others, and indeed between different kinds of Chineseness (for instance between the office worker versus the ‘study mama’), are still very much part of the creation of national subjects in contemporary Singapore (see Goh, this volume). An example of this may be provided by a detailed analysis of a single story. Chia Cheng Sit’s ‘Her One Redeeming Feature’ features a frame narrative, in all probability the result of influence from the short stories of English contemporaries such as Hugh Clifford and Rudyard Kipling. A Chinese man living in Kampung China in Palembang, Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies, is visited by his brother from Singapore, who, it emerges, has been attacked and fatally wounded. Waiting for the arrival of the police who are pursuing him, he recounts his story. He has become infatuated with a woman with an insatiable appetite for consumption, and, having exhausted his savings in supplying her needs, finally resorted to pawning the gold jewellery of a Malay friend. In an implausible act of stupidity, he proceeded to write a letter to his friend assuring him that the jewellery was safe, but accidentally enclosed the pawn tickets with the letter. His injury and imminent fate are the results of his erstwhile friend’s quest for revenge. The creaking nature of the plot of Chia’s story makes it easy enough to trace the story in terms of the ‘ideological materials’ that Sprinkler (1999) notes structure all literary texts. The protagonist’s problems begin with his abandoning self- improvement, with a departure from Franklinesque frugality into the indulgence and hedonism which Lim and others would condemn in essays elsewhere in the Straits Chinese Magazine. Gender is clearly important here: the idealized model of modern Straits Chinese masculinity – from which the Singapore brother has departed – is disciplined and hard working, engaging in a masculine askesis: his capital is his ‘life-blood’, subject to carefully balanced circulation (Chia 1899: 60). The principle of excess or luxury, is identified here, as it is in many late Victorian texts, as female. The narrator describes Siew as a ‘Siren’, drawing upon a common Victorian image of masculine self-restraint in the face of female temptation and, in the image of her sucking blood, summons images of vampirism from writers such as Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu, in which blood-sucking becomes associated with the perils of surrender to sensuality; her one redeeming feature proves to be her loyalty to him. Yet the work of gender is matched by a distinction between modes of government in Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. The story begins, like many colonial stories by Clifford, Kipling and their contemporaries, with a ‘long shot’ in which a landscape is read for signs by an invisible, detached observer. The two brothers are presented as similar in facial features, but differing in dress: A literary history of race 25 The tight-fitting pantaloons and peculiar cut of the jacket at once proclaimed one of them to be Dutch Chinese, while the loose trowsers and a jacket over a European vest and collar worn by the other with equal plainness showed that he had hailed from sunny Singapore. (Ibid.: 59–60)

The distinction draws upon a common separation made by British colonial administrators and commentators between British and Dutch colonialism: British colonialism, opined Hugh Clifford (1983: 264), incited the colonized into self- development, while Dutch colonialism insisted that colonial subjects be ‘made diligent by law’. The brother from Singapore is mobile, and his partial adoption of European dress indicates an ability to move with some autonomy within the hybrid contact zone of the Straits Settlements. The other brother is confined to the area of Palembang set aside for Chinese; he does not have the mobility of his brother, and is a subject of the arbitrary sovereignty of colonialism which his brother, in the story’s construction, has managed to escape. Yet the first brother’s autonomy is, we might note, in many ways a mirage: he has simply acceded to the subjection – and subjectification – of a modern, governmental form of power. His freedom is the freedom of the liberal subject, ‘individuality’ produced as an effect of disciplinary power (Foucault 1979: 167), and indeed foreshadows the contemporary freedoms of Singaporeans under the narrow discipline of the market. While the path marked out for the Singapore brother is narrow, and he strays from it to his peril, it is clearly demarcated. He must exercise manly self-restraint and refuse both the subjection of colonialism and the irrationality of ‘tradition’: through the ‘life-blood’ of accumulated and controlled capital, he may become a modern subject. We might for a moment in this text think that race has been banished; the Chineseness of the brothers is not stressed overtly, but rather we have an emphasis on bourgeois self-fashioning. And yet race does return. Outside the charmed circle of modernity is a Hobbesean state of nature, symbolized by the relentless ‘avenging sword’ of the ‘Malayman’ who pursues the protagonist (Chia 1899: 61). Here, as in contemporary Singapore governmentality, the threat of a racialized violence is mobilized to incite subject-formation and demarcate acceptable behaviour within a civil sphere. The stories from Straits Chinese Magazine, then, are drawn from a colonial public sphere as touched by only the faintest suggestions of nationalist thought. Occupying an interstitial space within a colonial plural society which sought to expunge such hybrid cultural formations, such narratives are neither fundamentally emancipatory nor fully conditioned by the discursive formations that surround them. In their relentless mapping and unmapping of race and class in their constructions of modern individuals, however, they provide an insight into racial governmentality in the making; it is as if we have a series of freeze frames of a process that at other times moves too quickly to be caught by the naked eye. 26 P. Holden The national project: S. Rajaratnam and Wang Gungwu The Straits Chinese Magazine, we have seen, inserted itself in complex ways into the interstices of colonial power, defying retrospective attempts to place it as simply conservative or progressive. By the 1940s and 1950s, however, English- language writers in Singapore found themselves caught up in the beginnings of the progressive politics of anti-colonial nationalism, forced to negotiate the place of already-racialized communities whose boundaries had been hardened under colonialism within the nation that loomed on the political horizon. Most accounts of English-language writing in Singapore begin with the activities of undergraduate poets at the University of Malaya in the early 1950s, and their attempts to create a distinctively Malayan literary voice in English. Although mostly members of an Anglophone elite, the university poets did respond to a wider movement of history around them, and we can understand the manner in which they negotiate with race better by reading them in tandem with the early fiction of Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, later to be a prominent minister in successive PAP governments from 1959 onwards. Rajaratnam’s sojourn in England from 1935 to 1948 shows anti-colonial nationalism’s other, metropolitan face. In London he met other exiles from various parts of the British Empire, the Ceylonese poet Tambimuttu, for example, and the Indian novelist Mulk Raj Anand. The distance provided by London enabled defamiliarization from the common sense of the colonial state and its pedagogy: before his arrival, Rajaratnam was to recall half a century later, he had accepted paternalist colonial discourses of ‘a natural relationship between god-like white men on the one hand and inferior Asiatics on the other’ (Rajaratnam 1992).1 Sojourn in the colonial metropolis also made possible the appropriation of many elements of the intellectual and social disciplinary apparatus of colonialism. Only three years after Rajaratnam’s arrival Jomo Kenyatta would publish Facing Mount Kenya, a product of his encounter with Bronislaw Malinoski at the London School of Economics, in which functionalist anthropology departs from its tradition of ‘allochronic discourse’ which objectifies the social science’s object (Fabian 1983: 143) in order to lay the foundation for a critique of colonial policy and foreshadow nationalism as a reclamation of the self. Rajaratnam’s non-fictional writings from the early 1940s struggled with the problematics of race in imagining an independent Malaya. They oscillate between two different positions: that ‘race’ is entirely a colonial construct caused by a division of labour that can simply be remedied by a more egalitarian social order and the opposite suggestion of primordial ‘racial and cultural differences’ that nationalism is forced to negotiate with but cannot ignore. His fiction, written at the same time, traces a different, and yet in many ways complementary trajectory: serving as the political unconscious of his prose non-fiction. Racial difference is banished from the stories by a simple expedient: all are set in racially homogeneous communities – the early fiction in Tamil communities in Ceylon, and a single, later story in a Malay kampung. Conflict centres on class, not race, and indeed in the Ceylon stories caste differences between landlords and tenants are elided in their presentation to Rajaratnam’s London readers. Following perhaps the example A literary history of race 27 of Mulk Raj Anand, the stories are strongly realist: with the exception of a single humorous story, all narration is in the third person, and aims to promote an illusion of transparency between the reader and the represented events. No Tamil words are used without glossing, and the story’s characters are largely presented as types, representatives of a larger movement of history: the oppressive landlord, the labourer who suffers and bears his lot, and the young educated man who questions. While the stories certainly have allegorical and melodramatic elements, they follow realist conventions and have plots consisting of causally sequenced chains of events. At first sight, then, they appear to embody Shklovsky’s ‘practical language’ rather than ‘poetical language’: they urge support for social justice, and make no attempt to slow down or complicate the act of perception for the reader. As I have argued elsewhere, Rajaratnam’s short stories are perhaps more significant in what they omit than in what they include (Holden 2006: 136–7). In the late 1930s and early 1940s, it is surely understandable that a young Malayan writer mixing with expatriate intellectuals from South Asia would focus his ener- gies through Indian nationalism, through an anti-colonial nationalism that had a strong history of political organization. Rajaratnam’s non-fiction attempts to map this Indian nationalism onto the very different terrain of Malaya, to imagine how a national community might be constructed from the legacy of a plural society. Yet, in Partha Chatterjee’s (2004: 23) words, Singapore’s future Foreign Minister cannot move beyond ‘the utopian claims of universalist nationalism’; he cannot see how to work strategically with ‘the politics of heterogeneity’ which are inherited from the colonial state. The solution the stories adopt is thus a utopian expunging of race from the texts themselves in order to maintain the possibility of a narrative of classical ‘pure’ nationalism modelled on those of Europe. This narrative is propelled forward by a Marxist-influenced dialectic based on class, resulting in idealized fiction replete with unconscious omissions. The extent of these omissions is perhaps revealed in one of the most unusual of Rajaratnam’s stories. ‘But for the Stars’, published in Asia magazine before the beginnings of the Pacific War, is, like the other stories, set in Ceylon. However, it is the only one of the stories to attempt humour, rather than social commentary, and it is the only one with a first-person narrator. This unnamed narrator recounts with amusement his Uncle Ram’s obsession with astrology. Ram is given to make predictions of what is ‘written in the stars’: if his predictions fail, he reassures himself that it is not astrology that is at fault, but rather the imperfection of his own calculations. Recalculation, indeed, soon produces a different prediction. At the climax of the story, Ram calculates the day of his death; when he fails to die, he discovers through recalculation that he has another five years to live, yet finds himself cheated by the stars by expiring in ‘the midst of his calculations’ two years later (Rajaratnam 1941: 179). Yet unexpectedly Rajaratnam’s narrator – whom we are encouraged to identify with the author himself – does not dismiss his uncle’s belief: indeed, despite his rationalist scepticism, he portrays admiration of the manner in which he ‘clung to a belief … with a tenacity that was tragic and magnificent at the same time’ (ibid.: 179). What is remarkable about the story is the extent to which cultural specifics 28 P. Holden are evacuated from it: the ‘astrology’ to which the story refers is clearly derived from Indic cultures, and yet there is no reference to particular cultural practices which might even begin to form the basis for racialization. The tension between the modernity of the narrator and the tradition of the story’s protagonist perhaps exemplifies the Janus-faced nature of nationalism in its dual regard of future and past, gazing ‘desperately back into the past, to gather strength wherever it can be found for the ordeal of “development”’ (Nairn 1977: 348–9). Tenacity in the maintenance of traditional beliefs provides evidence of ‘unshakeable faith’ that paradoxically bolsters the self-confidence of a modern narrator (Rajaratnam 1941: 179). Indeed, the presentation of astrology as a ‘science of the stars’ (ibid.: 177), however humorously phrased, rehearses a key dimension of Indian nationalist thought. Thus Rajaratnam’s imagined community is seen as the ‘original home of science’, since ‘unlike the West, it had never separated science from religious life and the philosophy of daily living’ (Prakash 1999: 230); such imagination sutures future and past. In order for the operation to work as a template for a multicultural nationalism, however, it must be evacuated of all cultural specificity. Here Rajaratnam moves beyond the monocultural environment to an almost complete erasure of signs of cultural specificity themselves: modernity emerges from a cultural past, but that past is reduced to the status of a pure abstraction. Written later, at the conclusion of the ‘Malayan Spring’ of relative political freedom which followed the end of the Second World War, the poems of Wang Gungwu’s collection Pulse seem superficially the opposite of Rajaratnam’s stories. In contrast to the short fiction’s studied realism, the poems are fragmentary, dense, and frequently complexly elusive, exhibiting all the features of Shklovsky’s ‘poetical language.’ They are also linguistically and culturally hybrid: indeed, several bear traces of the attempt by the University poets to invent a new synthetic language described by the portmanteau word ‘Engmalchin’ in order to provide a vehicle for the expression of a new Malayan literary consciousness. The poems emerge from Wang’s unique cultural experience: a childhood in Ipoh, Malaysia, followed by study at Nanjing University in China. Uniquely among his fellow poets, Wang was literate in three languages, and also wrote poems in Malay and Chinese which were initially published in the undergraduate magazine The New Cauldron, although not compiled into the poetry collection Pulse. Wang’s poetry has often been thought of as simply celebrating an idealized hybridity based on the experiences of a small Anglophone elite: much has been made of the poet’s own retrospective comment that the university poets had been in too much of a hurry to map out a poetic project that was not embedded in social reality (Wang 1958). Yet even in such celebration there is defamiliarization: the austere market of the plural society, for instance, is transformed into a carnival of cultural traffic: Trouser-wearing women Worm among saris, sarongs colourfully checked Baju biru of tailings And sams unhooked at the necks (‘Pulse’, Wang 1950) A literary history of race 29 Similarly, the dance halls, whose predecessors Lim and Song had urged young Straits Chinese men to resist, become a scene of almost phantasmagoric cultural interchange: Saxon cut and Mongol shape Dravidian red Flows as the bandsters ape (‘Three Faces of Night’, ibid.)

In these poems, Wang’s protagonists often seem to dramatize their own estrange- ment, caught between the ‘spheres’ of overlapping communities brought together by class, culture, and interest, communities which never fully coincide. The persona in most of the poems is racially unmarked, and while there is a focus on Chinese culture, it is a Chinese culture that evolves within Nanyang: in ‘Moon Thoughts’, references to both classical Tang dynasty poetry and English Romantic poetry are matched by a local image of ‘coffee dregs’, which is foreign to both of the traditions on which Wang draws. In their attempts to bring a Malayan culture into being, then, Wang’s poems seem to consciously transgress the different cultural arenas marked out by the plural society not simply in terms of subject matter, but in terms of formal concerns: structure, and the use of language. Yet at the same time they seem only able to figure such transgression as fragmentation. Rajaratnam’s and Wang’s writings dramatize the difficulty, even with a political commitment, of imagining political structures that do not reinscribe the racial categories inherited from the colonial state, particularly when – in the context of contemporary Singapore – the minority categories of ‘Indian’ or ‘Malay’ are approached. Yet they also offer for a critical present-day reader who reads partly in sympathy, partly against the grain, the possibilities of defamiliarization, of a rethinking of racial governmentality.

The early life of the nation: Goh Poh Seng’s If We Dream Too Long Goh Poh Seng’s first novel If We Dream Too Long, written in 1968 and published in 1972, might, in contrast to the political project of Wang’s poetry, seem to conform to Lim’s (1989: 526) description of the growth of a ‘liberal ideology concerning the freedom of art from social constraints’ in Singapore-English language writing after 1965. The novel’s protagonist, the young clerk Kwang Meng, feels ‘nothing in common’ with the rapidly developing Singapore around him. Rather than participating in a blissful commitment to production or the accumulation of wealth he prefers to take sick leave and head to Changi beach; he relishes the ‘formlessness’ of Sunday mornings, preferring to read the comics page of newspapers rather than political news (Goh 1972: 67). Kwang Meng and his ex-schoolmates, the wealthy Hock Lai, future lawyer Nadarajah (nicknamed ‘Portia’ because of his role in a school production of Merchant of Venice) bemoan the fact that they have ‘come too late on the scene’ to participate in the anti-colonial struggle; since those in power are still young, the only prospect for them is the life of ‘digits’ in an increasingly 30 P. Holden alienating society (ibid.: 10). One powerful element of Goh’s novel, indeed, is its contrast between the nostalgic memory of a lost, organic past, and the increasing sterility of a rapidly urbanizing present. In one scene Kwang Meng struggles to remember the smells, sights, and relationships of a Chinatown childhood; his reverie is shattered by an encounter with a neighbour in the corridor outside his family’s HDB (Housing Development Board) public housing flat. Yet Goh’s background should lead us away from any simple identification of the novel with an expression of Lim’s (1989: 524) ‘aesthetical ideology’. Goh certainly had a flirtation with Bohemianism as a student and part-time poet in Ireland and London in the early 1960s, yet he quickly became sceptical of the aridity and ‘nihilism’ of modernism’s vision.2 His return to Malaya and his subsequent move to Singapore to engage in literary and cultural activism in the city-state were motivated by a desire to participate locally in a global movement of decolonization. Thus Goh served as vice-president of the Singapore Arts Council and on the board of the parastatal People’s Association in the early years of Singapore’s independence, and was instrumental in the formation of Centre 65, an arts group committed to widening the community in which it worked. As an activist and often-cited commentator in the arts, Goh was, in his own words, ‘not unfriendly to the government, not friendly to them’, maintaining an independent voice that insisted on the centrality of the arts in a society which often saw culture as secondary to material development. Goh was also passionately concerned about other anti-colonial struggles at a time when the prevailing anti-communism of the People’s Action Party government made such sympathies unfashionable and indeed perilous. His second novel, The Immolation, is set in an unnamed Southeast Asian country which is clearly Vietnam, and while exploring the limits of devotion to any cause, no matter how apparently justified, he nonetheless expresses an awareness of an involvement in the politics of the region: there is no turn to the private here. If we return with this knowledge to If We Dream Too Long, previously incon- spicuous elements of the novel are thrown into sharp relief. Despite Hock Lai’s fantasies of being a ‘freedom fighter’ if he had born a few years earlier, the narrative seems to suggest continuity, rather than rupture, between the colonial state and the new national state that succeeded it. Early in the narrative, Kwang Meng passes a symbol of colonial inequality, the Singapore Cricket Club, which stands ‘patron- izingly at the corner of the Padang’ (Goh 1972: 4). His first impulse is scorn for such a ‘relic of the colonial past’, but he then muses that perhaps the club is ‘not so much a relic after all, inspite [sic] of Independence’ (ibid.). Walking further in the government district, Goh’s protagonist is struck by the continued preponderance of colonial building and street names ‘indelibly stamped everywhere. No wonder the English still feel very much at home here’ (ibid.: 4–5); his musings are interrupted when he needs to catch the bus. At the end of the narrative, a curiously similar incident again forces Kwang Meng to recognize continuity with the colonial past. Walking again on the Esplanade, a few metres from the Padang, he is confronted by ‘an old English lady, a tourist’, who asks him directions to the Raffles Hotel. Disorientated, he can only mouth the one-line speech that constituted his only words as the minor character Balthazar in the school production of The Merchant A literary history of race 31 of Venice: ‘Yes, madam. I go with all convenient speed’ (ibid.: 177). For all the developmental energy of independence that surrounds him, he feels himself only to have a bit part in a colonial script. Between these two framing scenes, there is little reference in Goh’s novel to the colonial past, yet the narrative present of the developmental state after independence seems equally constricting. Kwang Meng endures a ‘meaningless cycle’ of productive labour and leisure time, his fantasies of escape to the ‘rawness’ of Sabah – or more prosaically, a beach at Sedili, in Malaysia – interrupted by growing family responsibilities. The space of the family seems increasingly embedded within the state: Kwang Meng’s interactions with his parents and siblings all occur within the confines of the HDB flat. When his father becomes ill, Kwang Meng experiences fear of losing his job for the first time; he then realizes that ‘it must be just this kind of feeling, this kind of terrible fear, that made people the small frightened people they become; the spineless clerks who eke out a dreary job year after year’ (ibid.: 172). The growing reach of the state – Kwang Meng’s family can survive in part because they can draw on his father’s Central Provident Fund social security contributions – extends an embrace which offers comfort, but is also stifling; it is only the remnants of the colonial establishment, symbolized by the expatriates in the Singapore Cricket Club (ibid.: 4), or successful businessmen such as Kwang Meng’s uncle Cheong who have the mobility to escape it. If We Dream Too Long thus seems at first sight uninterested in race as a central topic. There is no attempt to produce a cast of racially representative characters, as many later Singapore novels such as Suchen Christine Lim’s Fistful of Colours would attempt to do. In much description the racialization of characters seems incidental – an Indian man at a sarabat stall (ibid.: 24), an Indian woman singing at a restaurant (ibid.: 33), or Malay bar girls (ibid.: 83). The fully realized characters in the novel move beyond stereotypes: Portia is a complex character who seems initially irreducible to any typification of Indianness. Indeed, if anything it is Chineseness which is reified: Goh’s description of the Chinese bar girl Lucy is a reinscription of orientalist representations of Chinese women from Western works such as Richard Mason’s The World of Suzie Wong (1957). Yet the trajectory of the novel makes the reader increasingly aware of how racialized representation is emplaced. If We Dream Too Long plots its protagonist’s movement from the casual, frequently recalled and idealized space of the schoolroom, in which differences of race and class are elided, to a harsher disciplinary world which oscillates between the private sphere of family and the public sphere of work and in which differences of class and race are more clearly marked. While Hock Lai, Portia, and Kwang Meng initially meet up after their results are announced, they do so in relative social equality. Yet they soon move into racialized professions which seem to mimic the colonial stereotyping that they might have been thought to have escaped: Portia departs to the United Kingdom to study law (a profession stereotypically associated with elite members of the Indian community), while Hock Lai succeeds in business and marries into a wealthy family, miming the manner in which the colonial state carved out the sphere of commerce for the Chinese. 32 P. Holden This movement results in two moments of recognition in the text. The first seems to be a conscious intervention by Goh. When attending Hock Lai’s engagement party, Kwang Meng, the protagonist, encounters Aziz, a Malay classmate who had been with him and his friends ‘in the same class for many years, since they joined secondary school’ until graduation (ibid.: 147). In a moment of defamiliarization, the young Chinese man suddenly realizes that Aziz is not a guest at the party, but is the driver of one of Hock Lai’s fiancée’s guests. Indeed, when Meng invites him to come and greet Hock Lai, Aziz demurs, reasoning that his employer will not approve and recalling the description of the ‘syce-driven cars parked outside the members-only enclosure’ at the colonial ‘relic’ that constitutes the Singapore Cricket Club (ibid.: 4). Despite a rhetoric of equality through a devotion to work, racial governmentality seems to persist and, indeed, be more deeply inscribed. Kwang Meng is ‘incensed’ at the discrimination Aziz has suffered, but feels power- less to work against it (ibid.: 150). The second incident is more explicitly foregrounded, and is also more troubling to a contemporary reader of Goh’s text in that it involves explicit racial stereotyping. Late in the novel, Kwang Meng and Hock Lai go to the docks to say goodbye to Portia when he leaves to study law in England. In the text up to this point, Portia’s Indianness has not been foregrounded. His Shakespearean nickname is always used, and when his race is brought up in his conversation with Hock Lai and Kwang Meng, it is often in the context of a relaxed boyish banter about sexual potency that involves the exchange of racial stereotypes in an atmosphere of mutual recognition. However, when confronted with Portia’s family, Kwang Meng suddenly realizes that he has ‘nearly forgotten’ that ‘Portia’s real name [is] Nadarajah’ (ibid.: 157). Portia’s father is transformed into a spectacle of racial alterity: he speaks ‘as if he were imitating Peter Sellers imitating Indians speaking English’, and he exhibits ‘all the Indian mannerisms and gestures’, shaking his ‘head as though the head was on a loose hinge, and clicking the tongue’ (ibid.): Goh then includes a page of dialogue in which the father’s ‘Indian’ pronunciation is represented phonetically. The passage is troubling because, unlike in the episode involving Aziz, racial stereotyping seems to gain narrational endorsement. However, for a reader, the effect is similar: we are again made aware that Kwang Meng is moving further from the idealized space of the schoolroom where race does not appear to matter, into an increasingly racialized world. The trajectory of Kwang Meng’s own personal narrative moves in a complementary direction to those of his friends, from what is portrayed as the relaxed, hybrid world of schoolroom friendships into an increasingly ethnically homogeneous world. Central in this transformation is his HDB neighbour Boon Teik, a young teacher who befriends Kwang Meng and invites him to his ‘tastefully furnished’ flat which Goh’s protagonist initially finds attractive:

The room was painted light green. There were a few prints of Van Gogh’s and Cezanne’s and batiks by local artists hanging on the walls. Kwang Meng found the green room attractive, being only used to white walls. There was a long bookshelf filled with books and a record player with a stack of long-playing A literary history of race 33 records beside it. Boon Teik’s wife had hung up green and gold batik cloth curtains, with matching cushion covers for the sofa and the two armchairs. A large, white Japanese paper lampshade hung overhead … Kwang Meng had never imagined that a Housing Development Board flat could be made so attractive and pleasant. (Ibid.: 128)

The slowing-down of the pace of narrative here and the careful enumeration of objects recall Kwang Meng’s earlier recollections of the Chinatown of his childhood. Clearly Goh’s protagonist is impressed by Boon Teik’s domestication of a bohemian vision of modernity, comparing the flat favourably to ‘the jumbled lot of rooms’ of his own home, yet the narrative withholds full narrational endorsement. There is a curious flatness to the scene: despite the reference to LP records, the description is entirely visual, with references to smells, sounds, and tastes elimi- nated. A shallowly cosmopolitan consumption of ethnic difference (European art and Japanese fittings married with Southeast Asian batik trimmings) has replaced genuine social interaction across the boundaries of community. The flat, indeed, becomes a site in which Boon Teik attempts to draw Kwang Meng into a vision of the future based on a new common sense of nationalism as productive labour, following the vision of Rajaratnam and other People’s Action Party leaders after 1965 of an effort to ‘re-introduce into Asian society a sense of social discipline and social responsibility’ through a ‘modernizing nationalism’ committed to the nation-state (Singapore Ministry of Culture 1970: 1). ‘You have to understand’, Boon Teik tells his new friend, ‘that … the more modern the form of society, the more complicated it becomes’ (Goh 1972: 131). Modernity, Boon Teik notes, means ‘numerous, necessary forms and categories of human functions, from the most lowly to the most lofty. Indeed, the range of differentiation determines the level of development of that society’ (ibid.: 131). Rather than holding out a vision of equality, then, nationalism’s modernity seems to promote greater differentiation and division between communities, even if this is now glossed over by appeals to meritocracy. The world Boon Teik offers Kwang Meng is also – and not entirely incidentally – a world without race because racial others are excluded. Through his new-found friend, he becomes closer to Anne, a Chinese trainee teacher also committed to hard work and social improvement – although, like Kwang Meng himself, she also harbours fantasies of escape. If Anne and Boon Teik represent how desire interpellates subjects in modern disciplinary society, Kwang Meng’s immediate family are representative of the disciplinary ‘fear’ that is equally central to subject-formation (ibid.: 171–2): his father’s illness and his resultant responsibilities mean that he can no longer maintain a casual attitude to work. At the end of the novel, Kwang Meng is alienated from the society in which he lives, and yet cannot conceive how he might escape it. He is increasingly confined within a Chinese world centred around family, in which markers of state-constructed Chineseness such as filial piety and responsible submission to work are performed for the state and – implicitly, in the final scene of the novel – for foreign tourists. In many ways, then, If We Dream Too 34 P. Holden Long is prescient of the increasing racialization in post-independence Singapore which Goh would later sharply critique; Boon Teik’s ‘differentiation’ would be not only economic, but racial, driven by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and other government leaders’ conviction that ‘performance varied substantially between the different races in Singapore’ (Lee 1998: 105).

Conclusion Literature in English written more recently and indeed in other languages in Singapore can, of course, also produce defamiliarizing effects, causing readers to reflect on their own racial subjectification and the manner in which they racialize others. Short poems such as Leong Liew Geok’s (1991: 59–60) ‘Farewell to Sumana’ or Alfian Sa’at’s (1998: 8) ‘Neighbours’ for instance, encourage identification with the persona on the part of the reader. The persona in Leong’s poem is a rich employer addressing a foreign domestic worker: it is only as the poem progresses that one realizes that this pretended dialogue is a patronizing monologue. Alfian’s poem is narrated by a female persona whom surreptitious textual clues locate as Malay Muslim; she complains about her neighbour in such a way that many non-Malay readers, drawn in by unconscious stereotyping, identify the neighbour, not the persona, as Malay. Both poems encourage the majority of Singapore readers to enact racial stereotyping, and then to become aware of it. Similar observations could be made for many examples of contemporary Singapore, fiction, poetry, drama and film. However, as I have argued in this paper, there is a particular value in reading texts from the past, texts written, indeed, before the majority of Singaporean citizens were born. Such reading opens up the possibility of excavating the unconscious of history, of making connections of the present to the past, and in particular drawing parallels between the manner in which colonial and national states managed cultural communities. Careful attention to such literary texts complicates a historical account that legitimizes state multiracialism as simply managing primordial communities, insisting rather on state multiracialism’s own implication in recreating and redeploying racialization. In examining such texts, we see ‘race’ in the process of being made as part of other transitions in modernity: individualization, the formation of public spheres and of a citizenry, and the solidifying and then melting solidarities of class. Such a reading, however, complicates any attempt to simply sidestep race through a liberal multiculturalism that replicates those of Canada, Britain, or the United States. We have seen the manner in which race has been historically embedded in the self-fashioning of modern subjects in Singapore. A literary history of race in Singapore can lead us to realize that ideological structures which may have originally had progressive elements (such as anti-colonial nationalisms) can become fixed and reified; yesterday’s tactical solutions have become today’s strategic problem. The paradox for the future will be to think through race in a manner that acknowledges its presence and its histories, but also begins the work of disembedding it from structures of representation and power. A literary history of race 35 Notes 1 References to material from the as-yet-uncatalogued S. Rajaratnam papers are courtesy of S. Rajaratnam Papers Collection, ISEAS Library, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. 2 All unreferenced biographical information and quotation from Goh comes from my interview with the author in Vancouver, 24 July 2005. 2 Malaysian history textbooks and the discourse of ketuanan Melayu

Helen Ting

The 1946 psyche: from historical contingency to fixation The staple material for the construction of a nationalist discourse is history. The emphasis on particular historical events, the selection or omission of specific historical facts as well as the choice of a particular perspective of interpretation, done with intellectual honesty, are all part and parcel of the articulation of a well-orientated narration. Yet when such narration serves the purpose of justifying a particular cause, it risks becoming an ideology of legitimization. Historically contingent happenings might then be presented as natural and inevitable and used as a model for the present (Dean, et al. 1983). This is often the case for historical accounts on the ‘origins of a nation’, which usually reflects the perspective of the governing regime. The teleological narrative of a national(ist) history tends to be distorted by the preoccupation to justify the legitimacy of a particular configuration of a nation (see Vickers 2002). It is not infrequent in such narratives that vital details that go against the propounded ideological position are obscured, even the description of historical events falsified or distorted in order to reinforce the argument. The objective of this paper is to analyse the ideological positions espoused by the state as revealed in the narratives of the latest editions of secondary history textbooks published by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the official Malay language bureau in Malaysia. These recent editions of history textbooks have been the subject of political contentions in Malaysia. In September 2003, a Chinese-based opposition party, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), objected vigorously that the proportion of Islamic subject matter had been increased drastically in the new Form Four Textbook. DAP national chairman, Lim Kit Siang, asked whether the move had anything to do with the controversial declaration in September 2001 of the then Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, that Malaysia was already an Islamic state. The following year, it was the inclusion of the word ketuanan Melayu (translated variously as Malay supremacy, Malay political primacy or Malay sovereignty) in the Form Five Textbook that was at the centre of protestation led by the DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng. Put on the defensive by the memorandum Lim submitted on the issue, the Education Ministry responded that ketuanan Melayu was mentioned as one of the concepts of nation-building after the Second World War but was no longer in use after History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 37 independence. Lim in turn questioned why a term which had never been used in history textbooks since independence was now being revived. He asked how such a ‘discredited’ concept of racial dominance that ‘reduces non-Malays to second- class citizens’ could foster nation-building and national unity. He noted that if such ‘racist ideology’ as espoused in the textbook were to be accepted, it would imply that ‘our nation is founded on the racial dominance concept of ketuanan Melayu’ (Lim G.E., 18 December 2004). Expression of disagreement with the contents of the new textbooks was also interjected by leaders of Chinese-based member parties of the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN) or the National Front. In his keynote speech addressing a party convention, the president of the Parti Gerakan Rakyat mentioned that one of the obstacles against the emergence of a united Malaysian nation was the ‘historical burden’ which ‘stemmed from a politically motivated view of interpreting our historical past’, resulting in the dominant interpretation of the independence history taking a ‘very narrow communal slant’ (Lim K.Y., 13 August 2005). Similar sentiment was also echoed, though in a more carefully worded way, in a parliamentary speech by Loh Seng Kok from the Malaysian Chinese Association on 15 March 2006. Unsurprisingly, both speeches stirred up strong objections from second-echelon leaders of UMNO, the dominant party in the BN coalition, in particular its youth wing. The sudden introduction of the term ketuanan Melayu in the textbooks, for the first time after more than half a century of independence of Malaya, could be read either as an indication of the significant shift in the ethnic balance of power within the ruling coalition, or a political blunder due to hijacking by ultra-Malay nationalist bureaucrats or historians. For some unknown reasons there are some nuanced but significant differences in the position and perspective taken between the Form Three Textbook and the Form Five Textbook on the principle of ketuanan Melayu. This is despite the fact that the team of authors comprised almost the same people, though Form Three Textbook was printed a year after the Form Five Textbook. These variations and inconsistencies lead one to wonder whether the protests from the opposition party could have led to some last-minute revision of the Form Three Textbook. Calhoun (1997: 98) describes the ‘ideas of nation, nationality and the like’ as ‘essentially contested concepts’ in the sense that any particular definition of one is bound to favour one group (in terms of interests and identities) at the expense of the claims of another. An analysis of the contour of official or state nationalism reveals a great deal about the balance of power among different social groups having an influence on the state. In the Malaysian context, the introduction of the term ketuanan Melayu in the textbooks leaves no doubt as to where the dominant power resides. However, it is more than the question of political dominance of a hegemonic party. Upholding Malayism, an ideology defined by Ariffin (1993: 52) as ‘the belief that the interests of the bangsa Melayu must be upheld over all else’, also orientates the contour of discursive and political contests between UMNO and the Islamic opposition party, Parti Islam Semalaysia (PAS). In effect, Malayism also 38 H. Ting permeates the outlook of a wide range of social actors in the Malay community. Commenting on the problematique of nationalism in Malaysia, Nair (1999) noted the difficulty in the formulation of a ‘unifying nationalist project’. At the core of this difficulty, it could be argued, is the historical specificity of the origins of the mass-based Malay nationalist movement which emerged following Malay protestation of the Malayan Union Plan introduced in 1946. The central issue which fuelled the protests was the offer of equal citizenship to the non-Malays, which annulled any purported political privileges reserved for the Malays during colonial times. Framed as an assertion of Malay ownership of the Peninsula, the protestation rejected the historical legitimacy of non-Malays as part of the nascent ‘Malayan nation’ on this ‘Malay land’ (Tanah Melayu). This line of discourse could be summarized in the key phrase ketuanan Melayu, an expression which continues to elicit strong emotions and controversies in present-day Malaysia. This Malay nationalist ideology was a historical legacy of British colonialism. British indirect rule in the name of the traditional Malay rulers required the maintenance of this political myth as a matter of political expediency. The same ethnically divisive tactic was also used during the Second World War by the Japanese military regime to control one section of the population through another, setting the stage for postwar inter-ethnic confrontation. The strength of the grassroots support for the anti-Malayan Union campaign had surprised many contemporary observers, including the leaders of the left-wing Malay Nationalist Party as well as the British authorities. The popularity of this hostile reaction of the Malay community needs to be understood in the context of the inter- ethnic hostility which broke out during the brief political vacuum after the Japanese surrender and before the return of British military rule (Cheah 2003: xviii). In several places, some vindictive local leaders of the predominantly Chinese resistance guerrilla force, the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), conducted a generalized witchhunt against purported Japanese collaborators. Many of them were Malays. In retaliation and self-defence, some charismatic Malay religious leaders – in particular, Kiyai Salleh – formed fighting Red Bands of the Sabilillah (Holy War) Army. Anti-Chinese attacks continued intermittently even after the return of British military rule. It is important to bear in mind that the anti- Malayan Union protests emerged as a popular Malay nationalist movement in this context of inter-ethnic tension (Cheah 1981). The terrible memories of inter-ethnic violence and mutual mistrust were still vivid and recent. The fear of ‘Chinese domination’ was palpable. Hence, it was not difficult for the Malay ‘administocrats’ to mobilize grassroots support in their campaign against the Malayan Union Plan. While the movement was against a British plan, it was not anti-British but demanded a return to the pre-war political arrangement of ‘British protection’. The ‘enemy’ was not the imperial master but the aggressive and dangerous ‘foreigners’ who were feared to be taking over political control of the country. This historical context explains why the designated ‘Other’ against whom the Malay nationalist movement proliferated was not the British but the non-Malays and, in particular, the local Chinese population. The instinctive reaction aroused by this feeling of threat was the resolute rejection of this Other, or at least its relegation to the margin. History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 39 In order to question the legitimacy of the Other’s political claim to the country, the argument emphasized consistently the native status of the Malays on the land in opposition to the ‘foreignness’ of the non-Malays who were ‘merely immigrants’. As a consequence, even after the accession to independence with a multi-racial population, when the purported ‘immigrants’ were unambiguously admitted as equal citizens in the newly independent nation, the divisive homeland/immigrant discourse of Malay nationalism which had served a specific purpose at a particular point in history, refused to go away. It has continued to exert significant influence in shaping Malaysian national identity in the new millennium. From this point of view, UMNO as the historical vehicle of this strand of Malay nationalism has yet to come to terms with and move on from this historical reality. It is from this point of view that the ideological biases of the textbook narrative could be understood. In this paper, I intend to illustrate how this dynamic is being played out in the articulation of the national history of Malaysia as depicted in officially sanctioned secondary history textbooks. In particular, I will focus my analysis on three areas of the textbook narratives; namely, the justification of the doctrine of ketuanan Melayu, interpretation of the historical issue of citizenship, as well as the historical representation of the various sections of the population by the textbook writers as ‘official interpreters’ of national history. The homeland/immigrant discourse is not only the central theme of the ideology of ketuanan Melayu, it also sets the framework of the historical representation of the various races as well as the appreciation of the citizenship issues. Moreover, the interpretation also has a problematic relationship with colonialism. The significant increase in volume and conspicuous emphasis on Islamic political history in the World Civilizational History textbook is another point of political contention that I do not have the space to elaborate here. To summarize briefly, the intended perspective proposes the historical Medina Islamic government as an ideal model of governance for Malaysia based on ‘unity through Islamic principles.’ The Islamic discourse, dubbed by some as ketuanan Islam, does not always integrate well with ketuanan Melayu. In effect, the Islamic discourse of PAS which was intended to be a rebute of Malayism of UMNO, at times criticized the latter as ‘unIslamic’. Nevertheless, in terms of inter-ethnic dynamics, the basic logic inherent in both strands of discourse remains arguably the same. It is about the symbolic domination of one ethnic group over the identity of the nation, disregarding the fact that a significant proportion of the population is non-Muslim, even among those designated as ‘indigenous’. In this chapter, my analysis is confined to the discourse of ketuanan Melayu as espoused in the secondary textbooks. This would serve as a useful context for understanding other related strands of ideological discourses, such as those of ketuanan Islam and the identity of Malaysians as Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian nation) that Khoo (this volume) and Antoinette (this volume) discuss respectively. 40 H. Ting The ideology of ketuanan Melayu According to the authoritative Malay dictionary, Kamus Dewan, ketuanan means the right to rule or control a country (negeri), district (daerah), etc., or sovereignty (kedaulatan). Its root word, tuan, in this context means ‘master’ (in relation to slave) or ‘owner’. Hence literally, ketuanan Melayu means Malay sovereignty or the ownership claim of the Malay on Malaya. In one of the textbooks, its definition is given as:

The love for whatever that is related to the Malay race such as political rights, language, culture, heritage, customs and homeland. The Malay Peninsula (Semenanjung Tanah Melayu) is regarded as the ancestral land of the Malays. (Form Three Textbook: 45)1

The textbook introduced the term in the context of Malay opposition to the Malayan Union, which is regarded as an attempt ‘to colonize Malaya and abolish ketuanan Melayu’. One of the roles of UMNO which was formed during this protest movement is described as the struggle for ketuanan Melayu (ibid.: 45, 52, 65 and 70). The textbook accounts suggest that this ketuanan Melayu has been instituted since the time of the Melaka Kingdom in the fifteenth century which is in turn regarded as the foundation of modern Malaysia. After the demise of the Melaka Kingdom, its ‘heritage’ was passed on through the political institutions of other peninsular Malay states and maintained uninterrupted throughout the centuries despite colonial domination and intervention on this ‘Malay land’. Treaties signed by the British with the Malay rulers only allowed the former to come in as administrators and advisers while the sovereignty had always been officially vested in the Sultans. Hence the narrative emphasizes the de jure relationship between the Malay states and Great Britain to argue in favour of the continuity of Malay rule of Malaya, notwithstanding the fact that it was really a historical fiction. There is even a chapter in the Form Five Textbook (Chapter Three) which elaborates four historical examples to illustrate this continuity of the ‘heritage of the Malay States’. Two of the four examples of the ‘heritage of the Malay States’ are the introduction of a written Constitution in Johor, followed by Terengganu. It is explained that Johor introduced a written Constitution (Undang-undang Tubuh Kerajaan Johor) in 1895, while in Terengganu, the Undang-undang Tubuh Kerajaan Terengganu (Ittiqan-ilmuluk bi-ta’dil il-suluk in Arabic) was promulgated in 1911. The third example presented is the gradual establishment of a ‘minister cabinet system’ (Sistem Jemaah Menteri Kelantan) in Kelantan from 1842. Lastly, it is explained that the traditional system of governance in Negeri Sembilan resembles the application of ‘democratic principle and federal concept’. In other words, the perspective of the textbook emphasizes the historical continuity of the Malay rule while playing down any historical rupture or change. The textbook narrative claims that the only time this Malay rule was challenged or interrupted was during the introduction of the Malayan Union in April 1946, History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 41 leading to the culmination of this ‘awareness in the building of state and nation’ in the form of the anti-Malayan Union protest movement (Pusat Perkembangan Kurikulum 2002d: 30). The key paragraph which summarizes the historical justification of the continued pertinence of the principle of Malay hegemony after the Second World War is as follows:

The re-introduction of the (concept of) ‘Malay ruler’s subject’ (under the scheme of the Federation of Malaya Agreement) is proof of the continuation of British policy as protector of the special position of the Malays, the status quo of the Malay states as protectorate, Islam and Malay customs as the core of Malay supremacy (teras ketuanan bangsa Melayu). These principles, proposed by UMNO and the Malay Rulers, have been included in the 1948 Federation of Malaya Agreement as written law. They have become the basis of Social Contract between the British and the Malay Rulers and Malay people that has been continued after 1948. (Form Five Textbook: 108; emphasis mine)

Therefore, it claims that through the concerted efforts of campaign and negotiation by the Malay rulers and UMNO leaders, this principle of Malay supremacy was restored in the Federation of Malaya Agreement, which was the blueprint of the political structure introduced in February 1948. In addition, it also formed the basis of governance in the formulation of the independence Constitution of modern Malaysia. Indeed, in the description of the maintenance of the constitutional special position of the Malays (highlighted above) as part of the independence agreement, it was again stressed that the latter was based on the 1948 Agreement (Form Five Textbook: 126–7). It could be deduced here that the text appears to justify the constitutional Special Position of the Malays in modern, independent Malaya in the context of the continuation of the principle of Malay supremacy as inscribed in the 1948 Agreement of the Federation of Malaya. This was arguably not the understanding among the independence leaders in their formulation of the Alliance Political Testament when reaching a consensus on the issue of the Special Position of the Malays. The work of Fernando (2002: 85), who examined the various official records on the making of the Constitution, and also Heng (1988: 206), who had access to the MCA archives regarding the Alliance negotiations, both indicate that Tunku Abdul Rahman emphasized the need for providing ‘special position for the Malays’ as protective measures for the Malay population in the context of their general socio-economic situation. The textbook also omitted to mention that the Alliance came to a consensus to subject this provision to review 15 years after independence, a position retained by the Reid Commission in its constitutional proposals but abandoned after strong opposition from within the UMNO rank and file as well as from other Malay opposition parties. This dynamic of dialogue and negotiation among the three component parties of UMNO, MCA and MIC in arriving at a consensus for their memorandum, and the contested nature of the provisions on the special position of the Malays during negotiation are not narrated in the textbooks. Knowledge 42 H. Ting of this historical background is in fact crucial for a proper understanding of the rationale behind the proposed Special Position of the Malays in the Constitution in the Alliance Political Testament. The Form Three Textbook introduced a perspective which arguably contradicts the claims to the continued relevance of ketuanan Melayu made in the Form Five Textbook. Chapter Four of the Form Three Textbook states that the principle of ketuanan Melayu proposed by UMNO was rejected by the Communities Liaison Committee, which was a forum set up by the British authorities to promote closed-door dialogue among leaders of the various communities in January 1949 (ibid.: 121–2). This is significant as the textbook praises the Committee’s role in fostering interracial cooperation with the goal of moving towards independence. It is the only mention in the five textbooks that the principle of ketuanan Melayu had since been rejected. In effect, it contradicts the earlier statements from the Form Five Textbook which claim that ketuanan Melayu had been reinstated by the Federation of Malaya Agreement and was the basis of the formation of the modern nation state of Malaysia.

Interpretations of the citizenship question Related to the issue of the special position of the Malays was the citizenship status of non-Malays which lay at the heart of the political contention. It is asserted in the textbook that the Malayan Union Plan offered open citizenship to just anybody (kerakyatan yang terbuka kepada sesiapa sahaja) as well as those who were born in Malaya (Form Three Textbook: 54). The intended introduction of jus soli citizenship under the Malayan Union Plan may seem an explicit departure from the expressed British colonial policy during the inter-war years. Yet it was actually a belated retroactive ratification of the de facto legal status of Malaya-born Chinese as evidenced amply in the study of Lau (1991). The specific postwar circumstances and political dynamics provided additional impetus to the move. The relatively unknown historical fact is that Chinese who were born and resident in the Malay states had been habitually classified as the subjects of the ruler based on the principle of jus soli even before the Second World War. This recognition of Malaya-born Chinese as the subjects of the ruler was based on the contemporary general principle of international law. This assumption constituted clearly the underlying premise in the deliberation of the case of Ho Chick Kwan v. The British Resident, Selangor (Carnell 1952: 510; Sinnadurai 1978: 72; Lau 1991: 17) by the Federated Malay States Supreme Court in 1931, as well as by the Federated Malay States Court of Appeal. The case concerned the banishment from Malaya of the former, who was born in Negri Sembilan but grew up and resided in Selangor. Both trials concluded that Ho remained the subject of the ruler of Negri Sembilan and was neither that of Selangor nor the ‘subject of the Federated Malay States’. In fact, the political status of Chinese residents born in the British protected states as ‘British-protected persons’ derived from the recognition that they were the ruler’s subjects. The UMNO leaders who led the anti-Malayan Union History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 43 campaign totally disregarded this historical reality, the recognition of which would have weakened their position of negotiation. Even the 1948 Federation of Malaya Proposal which, according to the textbook, purportedly restored the principle of ketuanan Melayu interests did not reverse this reality. These Malaya-born Chinese continued to be subjects of the ruler of their respective Malay states (Carnell 1952: 509). From the legal point of view, rather than restoring the status quo to what it was in 1941, as claimed by the textbooks, the 1948 Federation of Malaya Agreement had created a confused situation whereby the Malaya-born Chinese who remained juridical subjects of the rulers and British-protected persons were not subjects of the rulers for the purpose of federal citizenship (Sinnadurai 1978: 72). Automatic federal citizenship based on jus soli, as distinct from the state-based nationality, was only conferred on the Malay subjects of the ruler. This was due to the distinction between nationality and citizenship in the 1948 Federation of Malaya Agreement. As explained in the agreement, the 1948 Federal citizenship is ‘not a nationality, neither could it develop into a nationality. … It is an addition to, and not a subtraction from nationality.’ Nationality was still determined at the level of each state. For the purpose of federal citizenship, the local-born Chinese had to go through the process of naturalization according to written laws of their respective state. (ibid.: 71–2) The refusal of UMNO leaders to accept this historical reality as it was then has its contemporary parallel in the textbooks. In a couple of chapters in the textbooks, the emergence of a plural society is acknowledged in the context of British exploitation of local economy, but the de facto status of the Malaya-born Chinese as the subjects of the rulers is never admitted. The need for clarification of this messy state of the political status of local-born Chinese subsequently led to the enactment of the 1952 nationality legislation. The Communist insurgency had obliged the British administration to establish in a definitive manner the political status of the Chinese population in order to facilitate the implementation of thorny tasks such as army conscription and deportation of so-called hardcore Communists. Hence the main concern was the regulation of a population and not the granting of rights where it was due. As noted by Carnell (1952: 515), one of the chief aims of the 1952 legislation was to ‘deprive those locally born Chinese who are at present regarded as inassimilable (sic) of their British status.’ Henceforth Malaya-born Chinese were no longer admitted as the subjects of the rulers in a de facto way based on the principle of jus soli.2 In addition, dual nationality was not permitted under the 1952 nationality legislation. On the other hand, when compared with the conditions of access to federal citizenship (1948), access to Federation of Malaya citizenship (1952) was rendered relatively more lenient especially in terms of the residence requirement as well as that of language proficiency. For instance, for Malaya-born Chinese, while the granting of federal citizenship required that both of their parents should be locally born and remained permanent residents continuously for 15 years or more, henceforth the residence requirement was waived and just one locally born parent would suffice for automatic citizenship. 44 H. Ting In the textbooks, the 1952 nationality legislation is generally described as favouring the Chinese to the disadvantage of the Malays (Form Three Textbook: 100, 122, 132–4; Form Five Textbook: 121). It is stated that the 1952 nationality legislation had enabled 1.2 million Chinese and 180,000 Indians to obtain citizenship in Malaya.3 This was done with the aim of rallying Chinese support behind the colonial government in its endeavour to fight the Communist insurrection. It is also stated that this loosening of conditions for citizenship admission illustrates the ‘sacrifice of the Malays’ towards other races in order to achieve unity and peace among the population (Form Three Textbook: 100). The appreciation of the 1952 legislation could be argued either way due to the more relaxed grant of Federation of Malaya citizenship and the stricter conditions for state nationality. From a perspective based on Malayism, it is not factually wrong to emphasize that the legislation allowed more non-Malays to be granted citizenship. On the other hand, it is quite understandable for the locally born Chinese to think that ‘they have been accorded less than justice’ (Carnell 1952: 516). The perspective of the textbook authors and syllabus drafters appears to be still too entangled with particular historical actors rather than taking some distance and presenting views from different sides. More importantly, recognising the de facto status of the non-Malays as the subjects of the Malay rulers before the war would certainly weaken the homeland/immigrant argument, on which the doctrine of ketuanan Melayu was based. In the context of a detailed explanation of the legislation, Chapter Four of the Form Three Textbook introduced a crucial but dissonant perspective from the point of view of our analysis of the homeland/immigrant discourse framework. It is stated that with the 1952 legislation

the ruler’s subjects no longer consisted only of the Malays and Orang Asli but also the immigrants. In this way, the nature of citizenship of a Malay state had been modified. This was the important foundation of nationality (kerakyatan kebangsaan) for the Federation of Malaya. (Form Three Textbook: 133; emphasis added)

Based on what we have discussed earlier, the first statement is, in effect, factually wrong. In fact, the Naturalization Enactments introduced in 1904 in the Federated Malay States enabled even foreign-born residents to become subjects of the ruler through application for naturalization after a minimum of five years of residence (Sinnadurai 1978: 69–70). Even if the authors do not want to recognize the de facto status of Malaya-born non-Malays as the ruler’s subjects, the explicit admission of non-Malays based on a common principle of citizenship began with the federal citizenship introduced in 1948 and not with the 1952 legislation, albeit under extremely restrictive terms. Despite this, the second statement is of great interest for our analysis of the nationalist narrative. It recognizes in effect a change in the ‘ethnic nature’ of the nation. This is actually the one and only time an important issue related to national identity takes on a perspective of rupture with the past rather than continuity. The History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 45 significance of this statement is unmistakable since the decision on 1952 nationality legislation was narrated in the context of the ‘UMNO-Communities Liaison Committee compromise’ reached after the rejection of ketuanan Melayu (Form Three Textbook: 122). Nonetheless, if the logic of the second statement is followed through while recognising the actual de facto status of Malaya-born Chinese during colonial time, then indeed the nature of citizenship (kerakyatan) in the Malay states had long been modified during the colonial period.

Representation of the population Concern to justify the continuity of ketuanan Melayu based on the native/immigrant argument also overshadows generally the selective description of the immigration and settlement of the various races in Malaya as well as their historical role. The bias could be demonstrated in the selective though subtle presentation of the sameness of the ‘local population’ in contrast with the other-ness of those designated as ‘immigrants’. This indigenousness versus alienness dichotomy is not only racialized but also politicized as far as the differentiated representation of the conservative and left-wing nationalists were concerned. One conspicuous silence in the historical narrative of the textbooks is the minimal reference made to the Orang Asli, whose presence on the Peninsula pre-dates that of the Malay people, and who hence arguably have equal if not more legitimacy to claim Malaya as their ancestral land. They are nevertheless not explicitly entitled as beneficiaries of the constitutional provisions of special position. The identity of the earliest inhabitants is left undefined whenever they are mentioned, hence uninformed readers could form a misleading impression that the inhabitants must be the same as or in continuity with those of the later period. For instance, in explaining the importance of studying history, it is stated that

We should also understand the early history of civilization of our nation. In fact, the Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Metal Ages had existed (for the inhabitants) in our country. Through the findings of archaeologists at the early human settlement site in Kota Tampan, for instance, it has been proven that our nation and country had undergone those periods. (Form One Textbook: 15)

Such knowledge, according to the textbook authors, could ‘heighten our individual sense of identity and foster our national identity by eliminating our diffidence in the face of other nations in the world’ (ibid.). These comments create the impression that the writers seem to presume the continuity of these early inhabitants with ‘our nation’. The central focus of the syllabus as far as Malaya is concerned is Malay political history especially from the foundation of the Melaka Kingdom. Such an approach appears to presume that so long as the territory was under ‘Malay rule’, its people were the ‘Malay people’. It is a history of the formation of a people from the top down. The Sultans, by virtue of their being the rulers, were presumed automatically 46 H. Ting to be representatives of the people. These ‘people’ are not the subject of the narration except in one or two chapters when their socio-economic activities are discussed. Their presumed role as ‘good subjects’, as could be gauged from the various moral lessons dispensed from time to time in the text, is to be loyal to their king, ready to sacrifice, cooperate and be united so that the kingdom would be strong. In this way, attempts purportedly to illustrate the relevance of these historical happenings to the current situation serve only to confound further the distinction between the dynastic history of a feudal society with the ‘history of our nation’. Contradictory attitudes towards the presence of non-Malays can be discerned, particularly in Form Three Textbook and Form Five Textbook. They are designated as orang dagang, golongan pendatang or imigran (meaning ‘foreigner’ or ‘immigrant’, as opposed to penduduk tempatan or ‘local inhabitants’) to implicitly delegitimize their position in relation to Malay rights whenever the issue discussed concerns citizenship rights. The terms orang dagang and golongan pendatang are used consistently to describe non-Malays in Chapter Four of the Form Five Textbook which narrates Malay opposition to Malayan Union and the preservation of ketuanan Melayu. Neutral terms such as ‘the Chinese/Indians’ are used freely in Chapter Five in the context of extolling the virtue of inter-racial cooperation after the formation of the Federation of Malaya in 1948. But the term orang dagang suddenly appears again in the middle of Chapter Five when it talks about negotiating the grant of citizenship based on jus soli (Form Five Texbook: 126). In addition, the justification of the constitutional provisions on the special position of the Malays was argued in the context of the consent to the jus soli citizenship principle for Chinese in a quid pro quo manner. Chapter Five of the Form Five Textbook mentions that the demand by ‘foreigners’ (orang dagang) for the application of the jus soli citizenship principle could not be accepted by the Malays ‘because the jus soli citizenship principle would give the same rights to all the races and it was felt that this would further weaken the position of the Malays’ (ibid.: 126). In other words, the granting of equal rights to non-Malays is described as a threat to the Malays. The two groups are portrayed in an adversarial relationship. The solution proposed, so the narrative goes, was the exchange of citizenship rights based on jus soli for non-Malays with the special position of the Malays. As a whole, there is an imbalance in the representation of non-Malays, especially their historical contribution towards the development of the country. In the minimal space allocated for their description, the themes that appear repeatedly are the mode of their recruitment as foreign workers and the alien orientation of their vernacular schools. They are mainly described as migrant workers who took advantage of the wealth and resources of the land and entrenched themselves in the modern sector. Here again, they are positioned in contrast with the Malays who were relegated to the traditional sector, seen as a root cause of their impoverishment and backward- ness. Such perspective is illustrative of the lack of critical analysis of the British colonial policy of ‘protection.’ The impact of colonialism on the Malay people was in fact far more than just benign neglect. On the other hand, the fact that a significant number of ‘immigrants’ also came History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 47 into the Peninsula from the surrounding islands until the early decades of the twentieth century is never mentioned anywhere. Although the textbook states that the Johor ruler invited the Chinese to work in the plantation sector through the Kangchu system, it omits to mention that during the same period Johor also experienced a significant influx of Javanese workers. In fact, half a century after the introduction of Kangchu System, it was estimated that – at the end of the nineteenth century – four out of every five Johorese Malays had emigrated from Java (Guinness 1992: 5). Even in 1931, nearly 27 per cent of the ‘Malay’ population in Johor were born outside present-day Malaysia and Singapore. The figure for Selangor was nearly 28 per cent in 1931 (Kennedy 1962: 224). While the textbook obscures the recent arrival of a significant number of Malays from the present-day Indonesia and including them all conveniently as the ‘local inhabitants’ in its narrative, the label ‘Indonesia’ is used at the same time in a pejorative way for ‘undesired elements’ as in the depiction of the left-wing Malay nationalist leaders who competed with UMNO for Malay support. In the context of describing the ‘radical Malay group’ who supported the Malayan Union, it is explained that most of them were ‘from Indonesia’ (Form Five Textbook: 99). It is also explained that the British acceded to the demands of UMNO and the Malay rulers because they were worried that the Malays could be subject to greater influence of the ‘Indonesian political movement’ (ibid.: 104). Notable here is the inconsistency between the fact that the label ‘Indonesia’ is being used to dismiss the political role of a group of people by hinting at their ‘foreignness’, and yet the ‘foreignness’ of these ‘Indonesian migrants’ was not acknowledged when they were classified as ‘local inhabitants’ vis-à-vis the Chinese and Indians. This obscures the contested nature of social categorization of ‘local inhabitants’ and the Melayu community during the inter-war years. In fact, state Malay Associations sponsored by Malay aristocracies then only admitted those they considered anak negeri (subjects of the Malay states). Recently arrived immigrants from the surrounding islands, designated as anak dagang (aliens), were not eligible for membership (Cheah 1979). In addition, Malay elites also rejected local-born Muslims of Indian or Arab paternal descent, the peranakan jawi or Arab, as part of the Malay community (Roff 1967). Yet the most disconcerting issue for the textbook authors is arguably the anti- colonial role of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Echoing the propaganda plot broadcast by the British administration during the Emergency, the communalist slant in the textbook portrayal of the armed struggle cannot be mistaken. While describing the historical role of MCP simplistically as brutal and dangerous, the textbook narrative also casually links it with general Chinese interests while portraying the anti-insurgency resistance largely as a Malay effort. When describing the formation of home guards as one of the anti-Communist measures, the textbook appears to imply that only the Malays responded and cooperated actively to resist the Communists (Form Three Textbook: 93). The four pictures that follow (ibid.: 93, 94, 109) also show only Malay women and men as home guards. In actual fact, Chinese home-guard units also played an important role in the policing and defence of a large number of new villages. Even the idea of the 48 H. Ting Home Guard System was initially proposed by Tan Cheng Lock as an approach to get the Chinese involved in the defence forces against the Communist guerrillas (Heng 1988: 119–27). Besides, it is also explained that the Malays were not interested in Communist ideology which adheres to atheism and ‘uses violence and brutality to achieve its objectives’ (Form Three Textbook: 87), rendering it incompatible with Islam and the Malay customs. The text also appears to conflate the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) and MCP with the Chinese community. While it is undeniable that the MCP was a predominantly ethnic Chinese-led movement, the armed insurrection was substantively an anti-colonial and class-based war and not a communalist conflict. This is not acknowledged in the text. The Malay radical political movements such as Angkatan Wanita Sedar, Persatuan Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya and Hizbul Muslimin, though sidelined, are at least described as ‘left wing political parties that fought for independence’ (ibid.: 91; emphasis added). In contrast, the MCP is simply attributed as a terrorist (pengganas) movement, while in the same context, the British role is depicted positively as endeavouring to ‘suppress the Communist threat in order to maintain peace and prosperity’ (ibid.: 87). The anti-colonial role of the MCP is reduced to a single paragraph out of a total of 32 pages of Chapter Two in the Form Five Textbook on ‘Nationalism in Malaysia till the Second World War’. In contrast, the negative role played by the MCP during the interregnum period leading to inter-ethnic conflict and violence is raised repeatedly. There is no excuse for the atrocities committed by specific MPAJA units. Nevertheless, it is not explained that the violence was neither a deliberate policy directed by the MCP leadership nor a generalized MPAJA action. In effect, the textbook narrative generally takes on an anti-MCP slant. Moreover, one curious caption for a photo of marching MPAJA soldiers states that ‘MPAJA members or Bintang Tiga Army had tried to become colonizers in Malaya. Do we want to let this incident repeat itself?’ (ibid.: 46; emphasis added). The formulation of the caption leaves much room to ponder on the historical basis of the attribution of MPAJA as colonizers and the motive behind the question posed. This way, the suggested alienness and aggressiveness of the local Chinese population provides added legitimacy to the insistence on ketuanan Melayu. The inclusion of non-Malays in the independent nation as equal citizens appears all the more a magnanimous gesture of sacrifice and appeasement towards the ‘unde- serving’ non-Malays. While this description may reflect truthfully the sentiment of a section of the Malay population at that time, it would be difficult to found a united nation based on such a lopsided narrative of national history. If a national history is to serve the purpose of instilling a sense of shared destiny and the desire to move forward as a nation, a more inclusive historical perspective needs to be re-articulated. History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 49 Conclusions The existing institutional features of pluralism in Malaysia, such as the multiracial power-sharing arrangement of the ruling coalition, have evolved out of a series of pragmatic compromises in an effort to elicit support from a multiracial electorate at independence. Nonetheless, despite the multiracial line-up of the government, the unequal status between UMNO leaders and other BN party leaders is undeniable. In the aftermath of the May Thirteenth Riots, Malay political primacy was affirmed openly by the incoming Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak. Subsequently, while the perspective espoused by the Rukunegara appears to be more multicultural, the National Culture Policy endorsed officially in 1971 can certainly not be understood as upholding a principle of multiculturalism, whether the latter is taken to mean cultural empowerment of the minority, or equal recognition of the cultural expressions of non-hegemonic groups. Institutional mechanisms ensuring fair electoral practices and representation were progressively undermined during the 1960s and 1970s, helping to consolidate the entrenchment of political powers in the Malay electorate (Ong 2003: 109–11). This amplified further the currency of Malayism as well as the pivotal impacts of Malay politics on the Malaysian national politics. While it could be argued that the BN political elites had tried to accommodate multiculturalism and were more or less convinced about such an approach at some point in their political career, they faltered in the face of pressure from Malay political actors holding more extreme communal positions on various issues. In the end, considerations based on political pragmatism and even expediency appear more determinant than their commitment to any semblance of multiculturalism in their implementation of key policies of integration such as the education policy, or the New Economic Policy (NEP). The Alliance/BN national leaders preferred to deal with controversial issues through back-door consultation. They have the tendency to deliberate on concrete and urgent issues in a piecemeal manner while postponing or evading the need to make a clear stand on the general principles which should be guiding the formulation of policies. This preference to play politics of ambiguity has led to widely differing interpretations as to the ‘real intentions’ of the policy makers on specific issues. This is the case for the controversial issue of the special position of the Malays in the Political Testament of the Alliance. Interpretation is further complicated by the fact that the public positions of Malaysian politicians on specific issues could vary over time, depending on the political contexts they were put in. As a consequence, there has never been a clear and coherent policy articulation which sustains a state commitment to multiculturalism in its governance. What we have is the rhetoric pronounced from time to time by UMNO leaders, which is contradicted by other statements issued at another point in time, or by the actual policy implementation. In the implementation of the NEP, for instance, despite affirming clearly the eradication of poverty ‘regardless of race’ as one of its twin objectives, the concern 50 H. Ting to enhance Malay participation in the modern economic sector literally took over. Notwithstanding its considerable success in restructuring the ethnic segmentation of occupations, the NEP has engendered a sense of dependence among a section of the Malay community. More significantly, the basis of affirmative action has shifted gradually from political and socio-economic necessity to an argument of indigenity and historical entitlement as reflected in the discourse of ketuanan Melayu. It is from this point of view that a balanced historical interpretation of an issue such as the Constitutional provisions of the Special Position of the Malays has important practical implications. Discourse analysis of the most recent version of history textbooks indicates that the impulses inherited from the founding era of UMNO set the terms based on which other historical events were presented or evaluated. The native/immigrant theme framed a static historical representation of Malays and non-Malays despite their internal heterogeneity and the historically relative nature of the ‘immigrant’ status. The emphasis on the ‘foreignness’ of the population classed as non-Malays obliterates the reality of their progressive integration into the local society, while the Malay population as the ‘local inhabitants’ is depicted as having been around from time immemorial. In fact, the origins of the people who are designated as the ‘Subject of History’ are actually obscured. It may be because a closer examination of this origin could deconstruct the myth of indigenity as the basis of the Nation. Privileging the homeland/immigrant master narrative not only eclipses a critical appraisal of the impact of colonial legacy, it also results in a troubling articulation of the contradictory relationships between native/immigrant and anti-colonialism. The inversion of the attribution of historical roles in its presentation of the 1948 MCP armed insurrection is a case in point: the imperial British regime was regarded as the ‘protector’ whereas the anti-colonial MCP was depicted as the ‘subversive movement’. The communalist storyline at least allowed the radical Malay nationalists to be described as ‘having fought for independence’, even though thousands of them were detained secretly without trial by the British Special Branch in the context of curbing MCP military forces. The textbook narrative depicts the emergence of a plural society as a colonial legacy, something not of the native population’s own making and to their disadvantage. Yet historically speaking, the territory has consistently been marked by waves of immigration and integration of settler populations due to its intimate link with international maritime trade and the great mobility of the people by sea. Reid (2004) called Malaya a ‘Plural Peninsula’ to emphasize his point that the European- imposed, homogeneous conception of the nation has been ‘embarrassing(ly)’ imposed ‘backwards onto a cosmopolitan past’. In doing so, he has raised an important issue of concern from a post-colonial point of view. At the heart of the problems, indeed, is the ideal or the vision derived from ‘mature’ Western nation-states of how national integration should/could be achieved in Malaysia as a modern nation-state. In this sense, a lot of the critiques of proponents of ‘critical multiculturalism’ directed against the ‘monocultural tendencies’ of the so-called ‘conservative/corporate/managed multiculturalism’(Goldberg 1994b; McLaren 1994) could actually apply to this improvisational style of BN History textbooks and ketuanan Melayu 51 multiculturalism. Discussions on these ideological contradictions with the efforts to foster national unity under the slogan of Bangsa Malaysia will be carried out in Chapter 11. The stake is high for Malaysian proponents of multiculturalism. The appearance of the discourse of ketuanan Melayu in the latest secondary history textbooks is just one among other indications over the past few decades of the progressive constriction of the public space for pluralism in the country. The fact that these textbooks were authorised to be used signals the mainstreaming of such perspective of the more exclusivist current of Malay nationalism among the education ministry bureaucrats and academics in positions of influence. This lingering vestige of the ‘1946 psyche’ has persisted to shape the contradictory internal dynamics of the discursive ‘contests for the nation’. In a parallel way, the state-led Islamisation policy during the premiership of Mahathir Mohamed to deprive the rival Islamic party, PAS, of its Islamic political credentials, has also mainstreamed and legitimized among an important section of the Malay community the discourse of negara Islam (Islamic State). The conspicuous increase in volume and emphasis on Islamic political history in the Form Four Textbook mentioned earlier should be understood against this political context. The discussions by Gaik Cheng Khoo in Chapter 6 regarding the negative responses of some Malay media commentators on the films of Yasmin Ahmad give us a sense of such a mentality.

Notes 1 All quotations from the textbooks have been translated from Malay; translation mine. 2 Besides the birth requirement, one additional requirement for citizenship by operation of law was having one locally born parent (Sinnadurai 1978: 73). Henceforth, local-born non-Malays with foreign-born parents had to fulfil the following additional conditions to be registered as a subject of the ruler: ‘a) has not been absent from the Federation for more than five out of the 10 years preceding his application unless otherwise exempted, b) can speak the Malay or English language with reasonable proficiency, c) is of good character, d) takes an oath of loyalty to the Federation and of allegiance to the Ruler renouncing any other citizenship or nationality’ (Carnell 1952: 513). 3 The figures provided by the textbook are misleading if not factually incorrect. It was estimated that by 30 June 1953, 1,157,000 Chinese became citizens/state nationals by operation of law, but this includes the 350,000 who had become federal citizens by 1950. This leaves the balance of 807,000 persons for the post-1950 years till 1953. If we add the 12,000 who were granted citizenship through the procedure of registration and naturalization between September 1952 and the end of 1953, this gives us an estimated total of 819,000 Chinese who acquired citizenship in 1953 – and not 1.2 million. The net increase of ethnic Indians who acquired citizenship after the 1952 Ordinance was even more negligible; there was an increase of probably no more than 5,000 after deducting those who had been granted the status before the Ordinance. At the end of 1953, about 1.93 million non-Malays were still without citizenship, even though it was claimed that about 647,300 of them were eligible to acquire the status through registration. All the figures used for calculation here are obtained from Ratnam (1965: 84, 92–3). 52 H. Ting Textbooks cited Form One Textbook, History (Sejarah, Tingkatan 1, Buku Teks) (2002). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Form Two Textbook, History (Sejarah, Tingkatan 2, Buku Teks) (2003) (2nd ed. 2004). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Form Three Textbook, History (Sejarah, Tingkatan 3, Buku Teks) (2004). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Form Four Textbook, History (Sejarah, Tingkatan 4, Buku Teks) (2002). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Form Five Textbook, History (Sejarah, Tingkatan 5, Buku Teks) (2003) (2nd ed. 2004). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. World Civilization History, Form Four (Sejarah Peradaban Dunia, Tingkatan 4) (1991). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. 3 Eyes turned towards China Postcolonial mimicry, transcultural elitism and Singapore Chineseness1

Daniel P.S. Goh

Oh, do no make me despondent, Sir! Do you want me to turn my eyes towards China? Lim Cheng Ean, Straits Settlements Legislative Council, 25 October 1933

A dishonourable contention The occasion for Lim’s outburst was an unusually bad-tempered debate in the Council over education policy. Governor Cecil Clementi had embarked on a programme to ‘Malayanize the children of the permanent population’. In this regard, the colonial government terminated grants to Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools and provided free primary education only in the Malay language. In protest, Lim made an impassioned speech, resigned his nomination and broke the decorum of British civility by walking out of the Council. The conflict was as much over what should constitute a hybrid Malayan identity as it was over the political status of the Chinese in British Malaya. Clementi and his elite technocrats conceived of a Malayan identity that would depoliticize Chinese nationalists by turning their China-oriented eyes on a Malaya defined by an Anglo-Malay centre. On the other hand, Lim envisioned a multicultural Malayan identity allowing the Chinese to control their cultural development without being forced to acculturate to an Anglo-Malay hegemony.2 My point in highlighting Lim’s lèse-majesté is to bring out a third political- cultural position held by the Straits Chinese that has been neglected in the historical literature. Conservatives who turned their eyes towards China and adopted Confucianism as their returning identity are most retrospectively visible for their hybrid Western-Chinese identity. It is no coincidence therefore that the neo-Confucianist Lim Boon Keng is one of the most studied Straits Chinese personalities. The majority of the Straits Chinese community were conservatives who identified themselves as Anglo-Chinese loyalists of the Empire. This Anglo- Chinese identity was one grafted upon an imagined Peranakan heritage, so that the exclusive blend of Englishness and Peranakan Chineseness might be used by the Straits Chinese elite to distinguish themselves from the more recently arrived Chinese masses. 54 D.P.S. Goh Lim Cheng Ean represented a less visible minority position among the Straits Chinese. Neither turning their eyes towards China nor aligning with Britain, this faction adopted a strategic stance that negotiated Chineseness and Englishness as a creolizing identity. Politically, they held to a strategic position straddling the pro- British conservatism of the other two groups and the deepening anti-colonialism of the local Chinese masses. Thus, Lim’s biography manifests itself in our historical prism as a series of contradictions. While he was recognized by the British in his ap- pointments as municipal commissioner, legislative councillor and relief magistrate, Lim shocked Straits Chinese society by walking out of the Council, rejecting the Order of the British Empire and paying the fines he had imposed on ordinary folks as magistrate. Lim was Anglicized in many ways, given to athletic masculinity, cultivated manners and linguistic eloquence gained through his English education in local elite schools and at Cambridge. But while he retrospectively interpreted this formation as the loss of an original Confucian culture and took to relearning the Chinese language, Lim did not convert to neo-Confucianism. Before the War, Lim antagonized radical Malay nationalists by vociferously arguing for equal rights for non-Malays, but seems to have retired silently while the Malayan Union, Emergency, Malaysian Federation and Singapore’s Separation successively raised this issue again after the War (Lim 1978; Chai 2002; Mustapha 2005: 122–3). My aim in bringing out this third position is to revisit the Confucianist turn of Singapore’s postcolonial ruling elite and its consequences for multiculturalism in Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew and his Anglicized People’s Action Party coterie in the 1950s and 1960s resembled Lim Cheng Ean in terms of his strategic political position and multicultural identity. But when they turned their eyes towards China and adopted Confucianism in the 1980s, did they forsake multiculturalism for an ideological programme that flirted dangerously with Chinese hegemony (Vasil 1995)? Alternatively, was the turn a campaign to inscribe a communitarian ideology to shore up elite hegemony (Chua 1995)? Was it a hybridizing negotiation of modernity by postcolonial elites (Wee 1996)? I argue that the elite’s adoption of Confucianism was indeed a hybridizing negotiation driven in its particular direction, not by the postcolonial ambivalence of being caught between Chinese and Western identities, but by elite colonial mimicry and the semiotics of Chineseness in the context of multicultural politics in decolonizing Singapore. This political semiotics continued into the 1980s, as the elite struggled to get a grip on Chineseness. The elite’s Confucianist turn did not forsake multiculturalism but reflected the elite’s adoption of a transcultural identity to become cosmopolitan avatars and managers of Singapore’s multiculturalism. Rather than ideological inscription, the public articulation of Confucianism was an attempt to semiotically discipline Chineseness and multiculturalism in general.

The mimicries of elite hybridity In terms of Homi Bhabha’s (1994) postcolonialism, only the Confucianist and strategic radical factions of the three Straits Chinese factions can be argued to have realized hybrid identities and therefore the potential of resistance latent in Eyes turned towards China 55 the ambivalence of colonial discourse. Here, the interesting question resides in the postcolonial elite’s transfiguration from strategic radicals to Confucianists, or to put it in iconic terms, why did a Lee Kuan Yew who resembled Lim Cheng Ean in the decolonization years become like Lim Boon Keng by the 1980s? The Confucian and strategic radical identities are clearly not equivalent in the hybrid space of Singapore. The most significant difference is the authoritative certainty of the Confucian identity and the radical contingency of strategic radicalism. Consequently, this authoritative certainty provides the elite with the legitimacy to closely manage multiracialism and institutionally discipline popular hybridizations. To understand how this difference is derived, I make two interjections into Bhabha’s conception of hybridity and consider each with historical and biographical materials relating to Lee, a prime exemplar of the postcolonial transfiguration from strategic radical to Confucianist. First, in Robert Young’s (1995: 20–5) reading of Bhabha, he notes that Bhabha’s conception of hybridity transforms Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘intentional hybridization’ into an enunciative moment of political resistance in a ‘hybrid displacing space’ emerging between indigenous and colonial cultures, where the colonized subject’s mimicry of colonizer culture becomes subversive by contesting the authority of the latter, in contrast to ‘unconscious hybridization’, which forms uncontested amal- gamations. Now, if we consider the sequencing of mimicry and the inequality of ambivalence in positing ‘white but not quite’, the colonial subject is already being pushed in the direction of recovering what is posited as the ‘original’ culture. The very image presented by Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, in which Bhabha grounds his work, implies the sequencing of mimicry. Black skin emerges only as a cultural problem with the donning of white masks. However, ‘black skin’ refers not to an original culture but to a racialized attribute that emerges as problematic only in colonial discourse; that is, when the native dons the white mask. Thus, Fanon (1967: 18; emphasis mine) describes the colonized as ‘people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality’ through the acquisition of ‘the language of the civilizing nation’. The narrative of cultural loss and recovery is preordained in hybridity and the ‘original culture’, irrevocably lost, is recovered only in imaginary identifications. Consider this statement made by Lee in a 2005 interview in response to a question on the motivation to learn Mandarin:

The motivation is pride in oneself – a sense of identity, consciousness of belonging to a great civilization; this is where I come from. I’ll give you a simple illustration. When I was born, my grandfather consulted his Chinese scholar friend. That’s how I got my name. They gave me a piece of paper in Chinese on why he recommended this name, Li Guangyao. When it was given to me, I couldn’t read Chinese. I felt a deep sense of loss. Later on when I could, I felt a deep sense of accomplishment that I have connected with the past. (Lee, in Chua 2005: 111–12) 56 D.P.S. Goh What was this ‘deep sense of loss’ felt by Lee? In Michael Barr’s (2000: 165) comprehensive study of Lee’s beliefs, he makes the conclusion that Lee ‘entered adulthood without a conscious knowledge or appreciation of Chinese culture’. In fact, from Lee’s statement quoted above, we see that his ‘original culture’ is fundamentally imaginary in character, more a lamentation of disconnection to a racialized imagined past his parents were responsible for causing rather than a remembrance of the loss of culture. Thus, Lee spoke of ‘the past’ not in terms of actual mundane experiences of his childhood but of an imagined ‘great civilization’. In turn, Lee linked himself to this ‘great civilization’ through the imagination of his grandfather giving him his name at his birth. In this imagination, the material reality of maternal birth is erased by the paternal act of baptismal naming, material- ized in the paper filled with Chinese words. The sense of loss emerged when Lee was presented with this material remnant which he could not comprehend. The loss was therefore not one of cultural loss, but of being ‘at a loss’ in terms of the meaning of the colonial subject’s connection to his imaginary past. Second, if the colonial subject’s ‘original culture’ is an imaginary construction in colonial discourse, then it is necessary to rethink the relationship between mimicry and hybridity. There is no need to give up the notion that the subjectivity of the Westernized native is produced through the mimicry of the colonizer’s culture. More importantly, the hybridity of the deeply Westernized colonial subject, where it cannot be said that he had ‘original culture’ in any meaningful sense, does not reside in mimicry of the colonizer. Rather, it is when this subject turns to mimic what he thinks ideally represents his ‘original culture’ that he enters into the hybrid space of postcolonial discourse. In colonial discourse, this second-order mimicry is hidden by the retrospective narrative of cultural ‘recovery’, which belies the subject’s introspective learning of an ideal ‘original culture’ inspired by contem- poraneous exemplars. In Lee’s recollection in 2004, he made three false starts to learning Mandarin before his ‘epiphany’ in 1955. The first was when Lee attended a Chinese primary school at six years old, but after ‘a few weeks of bafflement’ of being taught in Mandarin that was purportedly ‘heavily accented by dialect’, he persuaded his mother to transfer him to an English school. Then, Lee’s grandmother made him join a village school to learn from a teacher ‘speaking what was supposed to be Mandarin’. Lee gave up after a few months and remained a native English speaker. The third false start was during the Japanese Occupation, when Lee attempted to learn Chinese to understand kanji writing. He was taught by a neighbour to speak Mandarin, but because he ‘spoke Mandarin with a strong Teochew [潮州话; chaozhouhua] accent’ Lee ‘erased this teaching’ (Lee 2004; also in Chua 2005: 19). The common thread in these recollections is the retrospective depiction of the teachers as speaking improper Mandarin. Lee therefore implies that his failure to learn Mandarin before 1955 was due to his teachers’ failure to meet the standards of his ideal ‘original culture’. The third false start is particularly instructive, as the volition Lee exercised in erasing the teaching betrays the mimicry of idealized ‘original culture’ exemplars. Because the Teochew-accented teacher did not meet up to Lee’s idealization, Lee retrospectively rejected this incidence of mimicry. Eyes turned towards China 57 Whether the subject actually moves in the direction of the discursive push to recover his imagined ‘original culture’ is dependent on the sociological contingencies of the postcolony. As Ania Loomba (1998: 179, 178) notes, the social positioning of the colonial subject in terms of ‘class, gender and context’ is as important for the construction of hybridity as the ‘inner life’ emphasized by Bhabha. In his own narrative, Lee’s 1955 ‘epiphany’ took place in the politically charged atmosphere of anti-colonial struggle, when he stood for election against two opponents, of whom the ‘Chinese-educated’ Chinese opponent challenged him to a debate in Mandarin. While Lee evaded the challenge, he had to ‘prove [he] was Chinese’ to the electorate by delivering a speech in Mandarin. A Chinese-speaking associate in the People’s Action Party wrote a short speech for Lee, which he ‘practised very hard for a few days’ (quoted in Sai and Huang 1999: 139; also in Chua 2005: 22). Lee’s mimicry of Chineseness lies in his imitation of the Chinese-speaking leftists of his Party he politically vanquished in a draconian fashion. Thus, Lee’s first serious learning of Mandarin took place when he became party secretary-general and, as he phrased it, ‘had to meet many Chinese-educated, young workers’, ‘left-wingers who spoke either dialect or Mandarin’ (in Chua 2005: 25–6) and who were thus organi- cally connected to the electorate. It was this class-inflected political context that led him to learn Mandarin from his leftist branch activist through a Chinese book on Marxism. It is known that Lee was impressed by the discipline and character of the Chinese-speaking leftists, especially Lim Chin Siong, one of the ‘really tough men’ Lee admired (Straits Times 1997). But while the elite admired Lim and the leftists at a safe retrospective distance in the 1990s, in the turbulent 1950s and 1960s they mimicked the Chinese-speaking adversaries in close proximity. Thus, Lee eulogized Lim when the latter passed away, ‘Because of the standards of dedication they set, we, the English-educated [Party] leaders, had to set high standards of personal integrity and Spartan lifestyles … We became as determined as they were in pursuing our political objectives’ (Straits Times 1996). As Barr (2000: 166–8) observes, Lee saw the ‘lifestyles’ he emulated as intimately bound up with the dynamic values and beliefs of Chinese culture the leftists held in the crucible of their Chinese language. Lee’s Chineseness was therefore accomplished not by the recovery of a lost ‘original culture’ but through the mimicry of his adversaries, Chinese-speaking exemplars who embodied his idealized Chinese ‘original culture’.

Multicultural hybridization and the semiotic struggle over Chineseness Lee’s mimicry of ‘Chinese-educated’ leftists presents us with a question. Official and conventional historiography hardly questions the Chineseness of the leftists, though the leftists were engaged in intensive multicultural interactions, exchanges and relationships with other groups. In fact, a proper historical reading of the ‘Chinese-educated’ anti-colonial movement suggests it was well on its way to cultivating what Bhabha (1994: 38) has called ‘an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of culture, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity.’ We are therefore presented with two types 58 D.P.S. Goh of hybridization. Lee’s mimicry of Chineseness represents hybridization as the authoritative recovery of ‘original culture’, while the ‘Chinese-educated’ anti-colonial movement represents hybridization as, in Young’s (1995: 25) apt description, the ‘raceless chaos’ of ‘radical heterogeneity’ and ‘the permanent revolution of forms’. If the anti-colonial movement was characterized by multicultural hybridization, how and why did it become known as constituted by ‘Chinese-educated’ activists who are tagged as exemplary in their ‘Chineseness’? As Sumit Mandal (2004: 54) argues, through the figure of Lim Chin Siong among others, the anti-colonial leftist movement was on its way to building a ‘transcultural solidarity’ before it was defeated by the racializations of the National Front conservatives. In the volume eulogizing Lim’s contribution to history, T.N. Harper (2001: 7) makes the point that the Singapore Lim was born into was a cosmopolitan centre of ‘transnational connections’ between China, India, the Islamic world and the West, ‘where information and ideas from outside lay in creative tension with an emerging local experience.’ In the rest of the book, what stands out for a reader steeped in official history depictions of Lim as the ‘Chinese-educated communist’ is the tribute paid by his non-Chinese friends to Lim’s leadership in the advocacy of Malay as the national language and support for modern Malay literature. Lim’s advocacy of the Malay language is particularly interesting since it appears to be more in line with Clementi’s Malayanization policy than with Lim Cheng Ean’s multiculturalism of the 1930s. The political context is, however, dramatically different and explains the coincidence of Clementi’s and Lim Chin Siong’s multiculturalism. In the period of decolonization, there was a need to create a national language and the anti-colonial left had to negotiate the British-backed conservative claim to Malay political-cultural primacy by appropriating the Malay language as the vehicle of its Malayan identity. The fact that Lee and his coterie subsequently took up the fight for a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ in the same terms as that championed by the anti-colonial left pays tribute to its hybrid identity. It also shows that Lee was still very much a strategic radical like Lim Cheng Ean, someone immanently embedded in the political practices of multicultural hybridization at this juncture. It is interesting to note that Lee (2004), in his recollection of his linguistic journey, said that he ‘grew up speaking English at home’ but ‘Malay and Hokkien [福建话; fujianhua] with the children in the kampong near [his] home in Siglap.’ In the decolonization years up until 1979, Lee publicly communicated with the electorate in Hokkien and Malay. However, the discursive push for Lee and his Westernized coterie towards Chineseness was a strong force. The English-educated strategic radicals were compelled to mimic the idealized Chineseness of their leftist adversaries in order to relate to the electorate and transform themselves into a potent anti-colonial political vanguard. My point here is that this mimicry process involved the semiotic struggle over the ‘Chinese’ sign. Deploying Marx’s theory of value to the political economy of the sign, Lydia Liu (1999; also 2004) shows that the invention of hypothetical equivalents in the act of translation in an event of linguistic exchange produces the meaning-value of signs, the use of which is deeply implicated in political struggles and the realization of unequal power relations. Eyes turned towards China 59 The meaning-value in question here is the meaning of the sign ‘Chinese’. For Lim and his fellow leftist intellectuals who attended Chinese-medium schools with radical student populations, being ‘Chinese’ indicated the incidental cultural medium that carried the universal social consciousness for historical change in Malaya. They believed that this incidence was linked to historical transnational forces that led to Chinese workers making up a large part of the Malayan proletariat, the Chinese Communist Party’s triumph in China and the worldwide anti-colonial movement. This historicist meaning of ‘Chinese’ did not exclude the other ethnic groups, since Chinese language and culture were merely the incidental medium for channelling universal social consciousness to the Malayan peoples. However, the convergence of proletarianism, socialism and anti-colonialism in this medium entailed the duty of the ‘Chinese’ intelligentsia to transform themselves into the vanguard through social action and collective ‘study’ (学习; xuexi). The latter technology of the self was to become the subject of semiotic struggle over Chineseness at the height of student unrests in 1956. The repressive colonial government led by anti-communist conservative Lim Yew Hock targeted the study groups, citing that ‘[t]he words “hsueh hsi” … before the Chinese Communist Party came into power … meant quite simply “to study and practise”’ but now provided ‘a seemingly innocent cover for the pernicious methods [the communists] use to indoctrinate the young people’ (quoted in Wee 1999: 174–5). The Kuomintang- owned anti-communist Chung Shing Jit Pao (中兴日报) agreed, describing the protest camp-in by Chinese High School students, as translated from Chinese by the colonial state’s intelligence apparatus, as a ‘concentration camp … with hsueh hsi, review and public trial’ (Colony of Singapore 1956a: 3). But while the Chung Shing Jit Pao might have agreed with the colonial government in linking the meaning of ‘学习’ to ‘communism’, the fact that the colonial government preserved the phrase in Chinese phonetic form in its English translation of the newspaper shows that it also linked the phrase to ‘Chinese’. In this instance, the equivalence between ‘Chinese’ and ‘communism’ was forged through ‘学习’. Aware of this, the conservative Chinese daily Sin Chew Jit Poh (星洲日报) sought to defend Chineseness by invoking the name of Confucius and dissociating ‘学习’ from ‘communism’. The paper opined:

… the reference to the Chinese term ‘hsueh hsi’ by the Minister for Education in his statement on the dissolution of the students’ union only meant that one should not study in the way of the Communists. The people should not be unnecessarily alarmed about the Chinese term of ‘hsueh hsi’, which, according to the dictionary, means ‘study’or ‘keep on studying’, as taught by Confucius, in order to gain knowledge. … As knowledge has no limit, even accomplished scholars and politicians must keep on studying. If ‘hsueh hsi’ is to be taken as ‘Communist’ then the dictionary must be altered. (Colony of Singapore 1956b: 30)

The appeal to the conventional authority of the dictionary is coupled with the traditional authority of Confucius. Weeks later, the same paper quoted the Minister 60 D.P.S. Goh for Education’s speech to show that his urging teachers to pursue new knowledge matched the ‘tabooed’ words ‘学习’ as ‘enunciated by Confucius’ (Colony of Singapore 1956a: 4). Significantly, the traditional Confucian notion of study as the mastering of Chinese ritual practices and ancient ways through the imitation of good teachers was revised as a modern ethos of self-improvement inflected by Chinese culture and embedded in an imaginary Chinese civilization. In the mid-1950s, Lee and his coterie were still learning the political ropes and mimicking the leftist to discipline themselves. But by the early 1960s, with faction discipline in place, the elite’s position in the linguistic exchanges that defined the political field of struggle gave them political advantage. From their vantage position, they were able to exploit the meaning-values of ‘Chinese’ of the three groups I have described in the semiotic fight over ‘学习’. From the leftists, the elite gained the association of communitarianism and Chineseness, with which they deployed to rally the masses and rail against the West and its individualism. From their dalliance with the British, they gained the semiotic equation of ‘Chinese’ and subversive ‘communism’, which they employed, donning their Anglicized mask to convince London and Kuala Lumpur to crack down on their ‘Chinese-educated’ left-wing adversaries. From the conservative Chinese intelligentsia, the elite gained the Confucianist significance of authoritative and respectable Chineseness, which they could use to distance themselves from their mimicries of both British colonialists and Chinese- speaking leftists. In turn, because the elite were positioned in the hybrid space of multicultural hybridization, they could cast the conservative Chinese intelligentsia as cultural chauvinists. When the conservative intelligentsia allied with the remnant leftist faction in the 1968 elections to preserve Chinese-language education against state encroachment, Lee placed the new struggle in the third part of an epic trilogy of ‘combat against the three “C”s, first versus colonialism, then versus communism, then versus communalism’, corresponding to the three groups in the semiotic struggle over Chineseness (Josey 1968: 40). When the dust settled with the conservative intelligentsia marginalised, the elite appropriated the Confucian significance of authoritative Chineseness.

The Confucian turn and transcultural elitism While Bhabha (1994: 38) is right in proposing that multicultural hybridization is at ‘the cutting edge of translation and negotiation’ and carries ‘the burden of the meaning of culture’, my application of Liu’s political economy of translation to postcolonial Singapore shows that it is all too easy for the permanent revolution of subversive forms to congeal into a power structure. Once a faction not committed to the continuation of hybridization is able to exploit the meaning-value of key signs for its own gain and seizes power, the burden of the meaning of culture becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few and turns into the semiotic disciplining of cultural meanings. In turn, the faction emerges as the political-cultural elite of the nation, utilising the ideological state apparatuses to shape national identity and the security apparatuses to check competitors. Eyes turned towards China 61 Authoritarian ‘nation-building’ thus defined Singapore society in the two decades after independence in 1965. But there remained an outstanding problem for the elite because the discursive push to recover ‘original culture’ was incomplete. The discourse of pragmatism that mobilized society for rapid industrialization in the 1970s offered ideological flexibility but not the content with which the elite could substantiate their cultural identity or discipline multicultural hybridization. It is ironic that after the separation from Malaysia, the elite gave up the hybrid multicultural identity in favour of the categorical essentialization adopted by the conservative nationalists of the National Front which they had fought against. Official multiracialism carved up and channelled the heterogeneous multicultural realities of Singapore society into four CMIO categories for state management. The state was not to be just a neutral arbiter of ethnic and civil claims but a custodian and manager of multicultural identities. But the normal political legitimacy afforded to the state was not enough to support such an interventionist role. Lee and his elite rulers needed cultural legitimacy. They had to be seen as transcultural avatars in order to reorganize identities. This led them to their final mimicry, irredeemably drawn to the conservative Chinese identification with Confucianism. In 1966, Lee began to speak of ‘the sterilising effects of a completely English- type education’ depriving ‘the child of that spiritual line with his past’, and thus the ‘necessity for preserving for each child that cultural ballast and appreciation of his origin and his background in order to give him that confidence to face the problems of his society’ (in Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry 1991: 29; emphasis mine). The compulsory bilingual policy introduced in 1960, which compelled primary school students to choose a second language on top of English, was consequently revised to include secondary school students, with the choice of second language determined by one’s official ‘race’. Two observations can be made here. First, the revised bilingual policy was a step towards the disciplining of multicultural hybridization by preventing linguistic crossings and limiting cultural exchanges to the ‘sterile’ English language, thereby impoverishing the linguistic dimension of multicultural hybridization. Second, the beliefs underlying the policy reflected the discursive push that led the Anglicized elite to mimic the leftists to recover their ‘original culture’. Thus, at this point, the ‘original culture’ remained amorphous and the figure of the confident, Chinese-speaking and socially conscious leftist loomed large in Lee’s imagination. Towards the end of the 1970s, the elite began to think of the content of the ‘original culture’. In 1977, members of the elite and academics held a conference to explore the identification and preservation of ‘Asian values’ (Seah 1977). In 1978, Lee made a significant speech at Nanyang University that re-affirmed Mandarin as the vehicle to the recovery of the ‘original culture’. A year later, Lee launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign to replace the widespread and hybridized use of regional Chinese vernaculars. In that same year, a study team led by Goh Keng Swee published a landmark report on the education system, which not only gave intellectual and empirical justification to the promotion of Mandarin, but also advocated the teaching of religious knowledge to reinforce the ‘cultural ballast’ of 62 D.P.S. Goh Singaporeans (Kwok 1999: 60–5). Through the religious knowledge programme, the elite sought to teach Confucian ethics in schools. The promotion of Mandarin as the lingua franca of Chinese Singaporeans and the promotion of Confucian ethics have been well studied. Here, I observe that the elite’s recovery of their ‘original culture’ was very much linked to the multicultural hybridization that they were embedded in as strategic radicals. The elite used Mandarin and Confucianism not only to create the medium and content of their ‘original culture’, but also to semiotically discipline Chineseness, which is the central locus of multicultural hybridization, and transform themselves into transcultural guardians of multiculturalism. The institutionalization of a special programme to teach Chinese as a first language in top secondary schools in 1979 was a significant move to train a generation of transcultural elite. The programme was not merely one of linguistic intensification but of acculturating students of selected merit in Confucian high culture, which was historically intertwined with the bureaucratic elite of dynastic China. With Mandarin and the associated high culture, the bureaucratic elite tran- scended the jostling linguistic cultures of the milling Chinese masses and exuded a cosmopolitan Chineseness. At the same time, the central state recruited its elite members from local populations and trained them to be functionally translators and cultural mediators between centre and local to create an imperial body politic. Of course, the ruling elite in Singapore sought to create a national rather than an imperial body politic. The logic of a transcultural elite linguistically translating and culturally mediating between centre and local still applies, but in a direction that tends towards national homogenization rather than the imperial segregation of high and low cultures. In 1961, Lee laboriously picked up Hokkien to fight an important by-election against Ong Eng Guan, an ex-founding member of the PAP and populist who was a great Hokkien orator. Lim Chin Siong was the other great Hokkien orator but had broken away to form the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front). Because most Chinese Singaporeans, including non-Hokkiens, and even members of other ethnic groups spoke the lingua franca of the streets, the Anglicized elite was effectively shut out of the multicultural lifeworld of subaltern Singapore. As the only elite leader who used Mandarin fluently at the time, Lee picked up Hokkien through translation via Mandarin in order to reach out to the electorate. From then on, Lee delivered his major public speeches such as at the National Day Rally in Hokkien. In retrospect, Lee attributed his political survival and success to his mastering of Hokkien rather than Mandarin. But in 1980, the year after the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, Lee made a significant symbolic move by delivering the National Day Rally speech in Mandarin. This marked the beginning of the cultural disciplining of Chineseness. When Lee translated his speech from English to Hokkien via Mandarin, he reached out to the masses on their own terms, in the terms of their multicultural meanings, and remained an equal and a strategic radical operating in the domain of multicultural hybridization. But in 1980 and later, when Lee translated his English speech into Mandarin to rally citizens schooled in Mandarin by the state, he reached out as a ‘good example’ to be followed, as a transcultural elite speaking in the terms of the nascent bureaucratic high culture of the young Eyes turned towards China 63 nation-state (Lee, in Chua 2005: 27–31, 37). This nascent high culture developed in close conjunction with the elite recovery of ‘original culture’. The Confucian ethics component of the Religious Knowledge programme became the discursive site for the construction, testing and unveiling of elite ‘original culture’. Eight foreign academic ‘experts’ on Confucianism from the US and Taiwan were invited to visit and study Singapore society and construct the conceptual framework for the curriculum. Harvard University’s Tu Wei-ming was specially recognized as the leading architect. Two important transcultural directions emerged from the academic seminars, public lectures and discussions with the elite conducted by the scholars. The first concerns the place of Confucianism in both the Religious Knowledge programme and in Singapore’s multicultural context and its role in creating Singapore’s national values. The second concerns the place of the ruling elite in the emerging Confucianist discourse. The inclusion of Confucian ethics with Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity in the Religious Knowledge programme and the promotion of Confucianism in multicultural Singapore presented problems. The abstract political-ethical thought system was the odd component in the company of world religions professed by multicultural and multi-ethnic populations. Confucianism remained closely associated with its roots in secular bureaucratic Chinese culture. Its ostensible multiculturalism was limited to the high cultures of the heavily sinicized states of Japan, Korea and Vietnam, but the scholars used this as evidence of its multicultural character. Tu (1984: 135) went further by arguing that Confucianism is a ‘universal system of ethics and a universal way of life’ that is not equivalent to Chineseness. A puzzled member of the elite asked, ‘if Confucianism is not identical with Chineseness, might there not be other ways that could better help us to cultivate what is particularly Chinese in us?’ (ibid.: 138). Yale University’s Yu Ying-Shih responded by clarifying that while there is an identity between Chineseness and Confucianism, ‘Confucianism also goes beyond this identity … it can be accepted by other groups’ (ibid.: 145–6). Tu’s response is worth quoting at length:

A concept such as ‘Chineseness’ has two sides. ‘Chineseness’, in some cases, is understood as a form of ethnocentrism which tends to be defensive in its approach to other ethnic groups. Such ethnocentrism represents a closed system that we have to transcend. On the other hand, terms such as ‘Chineseness’, ‘Malayness’ or ‘Hinduness’ can also denote getting in touch with one’s own source, drawing from it nourishment for further development … it is an open system because it allows and even encourages different ethnic groups to be in touch with their own sources. Communication between these groups allows for a futuristic outlook. This is what I would understand by the idea of a Singaporean ethic. (Ibid.: 149)

In turn, Tu elaborated this dual Chineseness of Confucianism and its function for Singapore. Confucian ethics would allow the Chinese ‘to express their own cultural 64 D.P.S. Goh form, in terms of their own core values’ (ibid.: 184). At the same time Confucianism would perform the transcultural role of promoting ‘the spirit of universalism’, thus keeping the ethnocentric tendencies of the other religious-cultural traditions in check and their ideas ‘properly expressed’, so that the separate cultural roots would ‘grow, blossom and eventually bear fruit through the educational process’ to form ‘a Singaporean ethic’ (ibid.: 166). More positively, Confucian ethics would contribute to the educational process through ‘habit formation, combining care of the body with cultivation of the mind’ as ‘part of the training of the very young’ (ibid.: 8). The vision was one of ‘digging a well’, ‘into Singapore’s own multiracial and multicultural source’, when ‘one digs deeply enough, one should be able to reach the common spring of humanity and the genuine source for communication’ (ibid.: 97). Tu does not explicitly name Confucianism as performing these two central tasks of body–mind formation and universal communication. But it is clear in his lecture on the ‘core values’ of Confucianism delivered in August 1982 to an audience of elite members that Confucian ethics provided a coherent agenda for synthesizing techniques of the self couched as ‘self-cultivation, self-mastery, and self-understanding’ with power-free ‘consensus formation’ using ‘moral persua- sion’, ‘exemplary teaching and personal demonstration’ (ibid.: 9). Tu’s creative revision of Confucianism through the universal humanist lens of modernity, combining the biopolitical care of the self criticized by Foucault (1986) and the communicative ethics advocated by Habermas (1984), suited the Singaporean ruling elite. On the most primary level, it gave content to the elite’s ‘original culture’ which, though different in substance, preserved the key characteristics of the elite’s mimicry of their leftist adversaries: social consciousness, personal confidence and conviction, Chineseness. Tu (1984: 168) presented Confucianism as ‘an ethic of personal self-cultivation’ grounded in ‘relationships of reciprocity and mutuality’. Tu painted the ideal Asian leader resulting from this Confucian care of the self as ‘a technocrat in the best sense of the word’ who ‘at the same time cherishes deep-rooted cultural values concerning aesthetics, art, music and family relationships’, thus making him ‘a much stronger competitor’ with ‘strong convictions’ that his actions ‘in a total context’ are ‘meaningful’ (ibid.: 182). For Tu, such a leader will promote the proper non-ethnocentric ‘Chineseness’ in Singapore’s multicultural context, thus the participation of the elite in inter-racial and inter-religious dialogue in the formation of a common set of national values would ‘help undermine the wrong impression of Chineseness’ (ibid.: 190). The promotion of Confucianism in schools and ‘Asian values’ in public campaigns was specifically targeted at ‘Westernization’ resulting from rapid economic development. But by turning Singaporean eyes towards China, Confucianism also effectively disciplined Chineseness against hybridization. At the same time, Confucianism was presented as transcultural because it is ‘tolerant of other systems of spiritual belief’, implying that it lacks the fundamentalist possibilities of the other religions and is ‘thereby a unifying force in our multi-cultural situation’ (Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore 1986: 120). Thus, it is claimed that the tolerant and secular universalism of Confucianism ‘can provide the Eyes turned towards China 65 Chinese … with their cultural identity while contributing to the world civilization of modern times’ (ibid.: 126). The place of the elite in this transcultural ordering of multiculturalism is that of ‘his brother’s keeper and the guardian and protector of all things in the universe’, the ‘painter’ or ‘composer’ who achieves ‘a beautiful whole’ and ‘harmonious picture’ by combining ‘diverse elements’ (ibid.: 93). The elite leader was to exemplify the ‘君子’ ( junzi), classically the righteous person, but now translated by the elite in what Holden (2001: 415) calls the ‘reinscription of colonial masculinity’ as ‘gentleman’. Like the sinicized British Oxbridge-educated gentleman-administrators who staffed the colonial administration governing the natives and their plural cultures, the ‘君子’ was imagined as the cultured technocrat, the virtuoso of science and the arts who masters the flux of multicultural elements to create a harmonious order. In this translation of ‘君子’, the elite found not only the exemplary figure embodying their Chinese ‘original culture’ that they could mimic, but also the meanings they could appropriate to transfigure themselves into a transcultural elite to intervene and manage the multicultural hybridization that threatened the symbolic monopoly of the technocratic state they controlled.

Privatizing Confucianism, transcribing Chineseness It is no coincidence that the elite’s Mandarin-Confucian turn took place very shortly after they cracked down on student activists, critical English and Chinese newspapers and vocal professionals in 1971, 1974, 1976 and 1977, marked variously as ‘communists’, ‘communalists’ or operatives for neo-‘colonial’ interests. When the elite withdrew the PAP from the Socialist International in 1976 after the International sought to expel the Party for the crackdowns, the elite threw off the last vestiges of their strategic radicalism. Their Confucianization in the early 1980s distanced the elite from the radicals they have suppressed and then gave them the confidence to intensify the disciplining of multiculturalism and strategic radicalism in particular. This began with the ‘Marxist conspiracy’ crackdowns on student activists, church workers and professionals in 1987 and 1988. The histories of the repressed groups have yet to be properly written, but their strategic-radical multiculturalism is suggested by their association with one another in spite of their different ethnic, religious, linguistic and class backgrounds and by their advocacy of issues that crossed political-cultural and national boundaries such as squatter rights in Malaysia and the plight of foreign workers in Singapore. Just as the activists were retrospectively and contemporaneously tagged as ‘English-educated’ subversives, the hybrid multicultural meanings that drove them to action have been erased by the semiotic association of Englishness and deculturalization. This is a symptom of the elite’s search for their ‘original culture’, since the repression of the activists found its meaning in the elite exercising his protective prerogatives as recovered ‘君子’ vis-à-vis the harmonious multicultural order they have been seeking to create. After the suppression of ‘English-educated’ dissent, the elite privatized their new-found Confucianism. The Confucian ethics course constructed by Tu and other ‘diasporic’ experts was dropped along with the Religious Knowledge programme after recommendations by social scientists 66 D.P.S. Goh commissioned in the aftermath of the ‘Marxist conspiracy’ to study revived religiosity in Singapore. In any case, having fulfilled its function in providing for the content of the elite’s ‘original culture’, there was little need to retain a full-blown Confucianist education campaign. In fact, to do so was dangerous, since the ‘diasporic’ experts were academic enough to warn in the Confucian ethics textbooks that ‘the noble ideas of filial piety and loyalty’ could be ‘abused to justify and maintain the power of an autocratic father or ruler’, that ‘only the king was fit to be a sage’ (Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore 1986: 125). It is telling that Tu, in his discussion of the Chineseness of Confucianism, rejected the notion that an ‘ethical system’ could ‘simply be coined or fabricated’ because this was ‘basically incompatible with a pluralistic, dynamic modern society’ (Tu 1984: 149). This particular aspect of Tu’s advice was not heeded. In the short three years after the ‘Marxist conspiracy’, the elite mobilized cultural groups, community leaders and academic experts in discussions to hastily formulate a set of ‘shared values’ and legislate them as official National Ideology. Confucianism was privatized through this process; first, by instituting government by ‘君子’ as a norm and a fact. The parliamentary bill states, ‘The concept of government by honourable men (junzi), who have a duty to do right for the people, and who have the trust and respect of the population, fits us better than the Western idea that a government should be given as limited powers as possible, and should always be treated with suspicion unless proven otherwise’ (Parliament of Singapore 1991). In short, the king is a sage by virtue of being the king unless proven otherwise. But since the king is not limited in his powers, it is impossible to prove he is not a sage in order to limit his powers. By circular fiat, the elite’s Confucian ‘original culture’ and right to rule were beyond reproach. Confucianism was privatized, in the second instance, by translating Confucian ethics into universal equivalents. Thus, the social emphasis of the Confucian care of the self and consensus formation were transcribed as the values of ‘nation before community and society above self’ and ‘consensus, not conflict’. Leading the privatization was Lee’s son and political heir apparent, Lee Hsien Loong. The younger Lee argued in 1988 that it was imperative ‘to translate the stories [from the classics] not only into modern Chinese, but even into English’ to preserve ‘the core truths’ and present ‘them more simply and vividly’, or Singaporeans ‘may become decultured’ (Singapore Government Press Release No.7/June). In effect, the elite’s linguistic and cultural values policies dovetailed. By translating Confucianism from its classical Chinese into modern vernaculars and its culture- bound parables and sayings into matter-of-fact statements, the elite transcribed its Chineseness into a transcultural Asianness anchored by the Mandarin-speaking Chinese segment of the population but dispersed via English into the hybridized remainder to drive the project of cultural recovery. The transcribing elite became the transcultural authority and guardian of ‘the core truths’ embedded in a recovered and privatized ‘original’ Confucianism. Only the scribe has access to the original text that measures the extent of the population’s recovery of ‘original culture’. Transcribing authority thereby provides for pastoral power to discipline Eyes turned towards China 67 multicultural hybridizations into the ‘proper’ care of the self and cultural exchanges into ‘proper’ communicative action. It is in this ambit of a transcribing logic that Chineseness continues to be activated, inscribed and disciplined. In the 1990s, the Speak Mandarin Campaign began targeting English-speaking Chinese Singaporeans, while the teaching of Mandarin as a first language was intensified. In the 2000s, efforts were stepped up to increase the pool of ‘bicultural’ elites proficient in both English and Mandarin and steeped in Western and Chinese cultures, by cultivating two hundred top Chinese Singaporean students annually, while the teaching of Mandarin as a second language was relaxed. This reflects the calibration of hierarchical identities that the elite have been inscribing on the multicultural hybridities defining the Chinese community, a cultural hierarchy which is encapsulated in the pre-eminent ‘shared value’, ‘nation before community and society above self’. The ‘self’, the synecdoche of Western individualism, represents the ‘English- educated’ at the bottom of the hierarchy. Seen as bordering on being decultured, like the elite in their Anglicized state before they mimicked the ‘Chinese-speaking’ leftists, the elite sought to Mandarinize the ‘English-educated’ Chinese. In the middle of the hierarchy, ‘community’ represents the ‘Chinese-speaking’ Chinese, whose rich cultural diversity is unified in the Confucian ‘original culture’ the elite has appropriated from the conservative Chinese intelligentsia. Thus, the elite sought to both Mandarinize the ‘dialect’-speaking masses and co-opt the conservative intelligentsia into its biculturalist programmes, from which they recruit new members. The elite represent both ‘nation’ and ‘society’, ruling as transcultural avatars disciplining the translation between ‘community’ and ‘self’, between ‘Chinese-speaking’ and ‘English-educated’, potential strategic radicals respectively labelled as communalist ‘chauvinists’ and ‘individualistic’ liberals and kept in check by turning their eyes towards China. The Chineseness in official multiculturalism is therefore a hollow category, a construction of lack in ‘original culture’ through a historical series of postcolonial mimicries and semiotic transcriptions that disciplines hybrid multiculturalism. In iconic terms, Lim Cheng Ean and Lim Chin Siong represent the Singaporean original culture of hybrid multiculturalism. It is this same hybrid multiculturalism that Lee Kuan Yew repudiates as decultured lack in his articulation of Confucian Chineseness.

Conclusion Chineseness in Singapore appears to be privileged because it is the central term from which the elite derive their transcultural identity and authority, as evident in the Mandarin language policy, the Confucianization programme and the new Chinese bicultural education policy (see Poon, Chapter 4 of this volume) – there are no equivalents for the Malay or Indian communities. But the point is not that there should be formal or substantive equality for the others in state multiculturalism. The price of Chineseness being privileged is that Chinese identities, whether more or less hybridized, are also the most disciplined of multicultural identities in Singapore, while the rest are disciplined in different and lesser ways, often 68 D.P.S. Goh functioning as stereotyped ‘others’ exemplifying ill discipline (Tan, Chapter 7, this volume) or as symptoms of repressed Chinese identities (Gabrielpillai, Chapter 8, this volume). The graduates of the Chinese bicultural education programme, which combines both the Mandarin language and Confucianization programmes in a coherent package, will regenerate the ruling elite with new members so that the elite will sustain its transcultural authority as Confucian-Chinese avatars. This is built on the notion that the elite’s brand of Confucianism bestowed by Tu and the commissioned academic experts, now privatized, represents the universal fount of wisdom unifying and keeping in check the parochial ethnocentrisms of the multicultural others, especially the non-elite forms of Chineseness. In Singapore thus, the colonial legacy of racialization has been preserved in its categorical form of CMIO, but the operation of categories for state multiculturalism has been transformed by a disciplinary focus on the ascribed Chinese majority. I have shown that this was not merely a political or economic necessity but one closely related to the postcoloniality of the ruling elite’s own identity formation as they participated in the cultural politics of decolonization and nation-building. By pressing down on the shoulders of the ‘Chinese-educated’ during decolonization and dressed in the Confucian cloaks tailored by sinologists, the ruling elite have turned themselves into transcultural avatars exuding a paradoxical universal and transethnic Chineseness. In turn, the elite’s multiculturalist policies have parochi- alized all ethnic identities and, in official multicultural discourse and practices, reduced them to bite-size cultural items for consumption. In this sense, it would be wrong to argue that state multiculturalism in Singapore reflects a Chinese-centred hegemony entailing assimilation and contestation by non-Chinese minority groups (Barr and Low 2005). State multiculturalism in Singapore does not privilege a vernacular identity as the transcultural and universal identity against which all other identities are judged, but a constructed Chinese Mandarin culture that was mimicked, imported and transplanted into the cultural soil of existing vernacular identities including different Chinese identities. Vernacular identities are not erased, but managed by the transcultural elite just as the gardener tends to the soil of the bonsai plant he intimately identifies with. This is not a trite analogy, for if multiculturalism, in its idealization by Western philosophers, extols rich cultural differences as a basis for a post-liberal society, as Taylor (1994) would have it, then state multiculturalism, especially in postcolonial developmental states in Asia, exploits these rich cultural differences using colonial racial frameworks adapted with a constructed transcultural elite identity. In the new millennium, this transformed postcolonial state multiculturalism forms the basis for the elite’s promotion of neoliberal multiculturalism, which celebrates a depoliticized and unconscious hybridization, as they sell Singapore as a global city to transnational capitalism. The transcultural Chineseness of the elite continues to be used as the disciplining rod for the ascribed Chinese majority who are actively producing new hybrid practices as they face the brunt of globalization as Singapore’s middle class. In 2000, the elite launched the Speak Good English Movement to discipline the increasing articulation of a hybrid and transethnic Singaporean identity rooted in Singlish, a creolized English that liberally mixes Eyes turned towards China 69 accents, phrases, syntax and semantics from Chinese, Malay and Indian languages. Subsequently, the Speak Mandarin Campaign took a Singlish turn, adopting a lifestyle-oriented approach with the tagline ‘华语 COOL!’ (Mandarin is cool) to reach out to the younger generations of Chinese Singaporeans who mostly speak Singlish. On two fronts then, their hybrid identity is disciplined, with the elite seeking to discipline Singlish with ‘good English’ while using Singlish to turn their eyes towards rising China. Already implicit in the Confucianist turn, state multiculturalism in this brave new world of open economies equates cosmopolitanism to the elite’s transcultural Chinese identity, with all the attendant fantasies of being fully immersed in and mobile through both Western and Asian cultures. The transcultural Chineseness in state multiculturalism is indeed hollow; it is a prism that refracts the light of hybrid multiculturalism and then indexes and composes the colours in discrete racialized terms of old colonial vintage, like the cultured Confucian painter, into the supposedly harmonious whole of official multiculturalism, now framed as an Asian cosmopolitanism in the new world order of neoliberal capitalism.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Philip Holden, Matilda Gabrielpillai, Shelly Chan, Vivienne Wee, Koh Tai Ann and Kwok Kian Woon and members of the Nanyang Technological University Division of Sociology who endured the seminar in February 2007 in which I presented this paper for their critical comments and encouraging appraisals. 2 Legislative Council proceedings, 25 October 1933, p. B190, Legislative Council Proceedings and Papers, Vol. 133, Straits Settlements Sessional Papers. Records of the Colonial Office, No. 275, Public Records Office, United Kingdom. 4 Pick and mix for a global city Race and cosmopolitanism in Singapore

Angelia Poon

Global cities, in prevailing conceptualizations and popular fantasies of a highly interconnected world, are typically characterized by strong infrastructure, sophisticated technological networks, ethnic and cultural diversity, an open political climate, and a cosmopolitan outlook. These characteristics are at once the reason for and the consequence of global cities as strategic and specialized centers of highly mobile finance capital. Enacting, in Saskia Sassen’s (2001) term, a distinct ‘spatiotemporal order’, the global city is embedded in a worldwide grid along with other similar cities causing it frequently to appear at odds with some of the demands of territorial nationalism where sovereignty is dependent on geographical borders and a certain non-contiguity of space. This opposition accounts in part for the impression that the global city operates according to a law and logic different from those governing the rest of the nation in which it is situated and bound; indeed that it is, like the past, perhaps another country altogether. Sassen (2004) refers to this disjunction between global city and nation as part of a material as well as conceptual ‘unbundling’ of the nation-state and its authority over people’s lives. In the case of Singapore – the ‘little red dot’ on the world map that is island, nation, state and city all at once because of its size – the tension between its aspiration to become a global city securely plugged into neoliberal market capitalism (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000) and the demands of social (including racial) control related to its nation-statehood appears in many ways rather more acutely intensified. Such a tension is, predictably enough, largely absent from the realm of public discourse here as terms like ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘global city’ circulate without self-reflexive irony or contradiction as part of the Singapore state’s latest nationalist project. The state’s blueprint for the next chapter of the constantly unfolding Singapore Story – that officially scripted narrative of national progress – has been clearly articulated. Singapore, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (Lee 2005) declared in a National Day Rally speech to the nation, must be ‘re-made’ into a ‘vibrant global city’, cosmopolitan in feel and outlook, a home for foreign talent and Singaporeans alike. More than ever, Singapore’s geophysical features – its size, lack of a hinterland, small population – mandate its inextricable integration with the global knowledge economy. This sense of urgency and impending crisis in the government’s public rhetoric is hardly new. The call to be a global city interpellates the citizen-subject of Singapore in the twentieth-first century as a divided one, at Pick and mix for a global city 71 once professing rootedness in Singapore yet also possessing a transnational ability to negotiate and navigate between different cultures and communities. Employing the terms of a neoliberal rhetoric of globalization, the Singapore citizen now has to be fashioned into an enterprising, creative, and more sharply individuated subject. To the state, this desire to be a global city must be managed alongside more ‘local’ concerns such as the aim for Singapore to be the ‘best home’ for its citizens (Yeoh and Chang 2001: 1039). Significantly, in this vision of global city and nation, the policy and founding national ideology of multiracialism is commonly represented as a boon and natural inheritance, the foundation stone upon which the state can decidedly build for the future. Interrogating the state’s investment in effecting a seamless move from postcolonial multiracialism to cosmopolitanism in the name of the nation, I want in this chapter to force a critical wedge between the two terms by first examining the fretwork of assumptions that underpins both the notion of what it means to be ‘multiracial’ and what it means to be ‘cosmopolitan’ in Singapore. How, in other words, given the possible historical and political meanings of the term as well as the way it has been appropriated by the Singapore state, might cosmopolitanism put pressure on the selective pluralism of the state’s traditional multiracialism and its current neoliberal version? What are the silences and anxieties surrounding the usage of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in public discourse, and what might these reveal about state power as well as about the possibilities for reconfiguring the character of citizenship? I will address these questions more broadly and theoretically in the first part of the chapter before framing the discussion in relation to two specific and distinct areas of policy in Singapore: the shift in emphasis from bilingualism to biculturalism and the state’s ongoing regulatory controls and discursive construction of foreign labour within the national space. What will emerge from this discussion is a picture of the contingent and partial nature of state power in Singapore as the government seeks to manage both a selective and a strategic cultural diversity, and the understanding of what cosmopolitanism and race can mean as well.

Business as usual? Multiracialism, cosmopolitanism, and neoliberalism In the National Day Rally speech I referred to at the start of this chapter in which he articulates his hopes for Singapore as a global city, Prime Minister Lee (2005) also highlights as a source of concern the social problem of what he calls ‘dys- functional’, ‘low-income’ families. He notes that ‘[a]ll races are represented. But among the groups, the Malay community is over-represented.’ Lee’s observation is telling: for in comparing the different races in this manner as if each had a score card, and singling out the Malay community, Lee discloses the continued tenacity of a racialized way of dividing and organizing Singaporean society that informs the state’s approach to social problems. This hegemonic mode of thinking which has acquired the automaticity and the compelling force of habit is the product of one of the founding ideologies of the Singapore nation – multiracialism in terms of the official racial categories of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others (CMIO). 72 A. Poon Multiracialism was the defining gesture of a newly sovereign state when Singapore was ‘nationalized’ in 1965 following separation from Malasia (Hill and Lian 1995; Brown 1994). It enabled a safeguarding of allegedly Chinese interests through its construction of a favoured ‘Chinese’ subject shorn of the political radicalism of the Nanyang Chinese, all the while without seeming to privilege any one particular racial group. Certainly it made and still continues to make available to the government a high-minded rhetoric of equality, fairness, and meritocracy. In terms of social management and control, it allows the state to advertize its impartiality while depoliticizing ethnicity and undermining the political potential of the racial groups particularly as this pertains to anti-state behaviour and action (Chua 1995). Presented as a self-evident and rational policy based on existing ‘fact’, multiracialism hides its constitutive role in race-building so that race is always already an assumed ontological category in Singapore. The fact of race so constructed provides a continued source of legitimation for state power by mystifying state policy as being nothing more than faithful adherence to the contours of a ‘natural’ order of things. If the struggle in the last few decades over the meaning of the nation in many countries – like Britain, for example – has had to do with redressing the problem of certain races being excluded from the national space, Singapore’s struggle has been of quite a different complexion altogether. In Britain, as the case of the development of black British cultural studies shows, redefining the nation has meant trying to achieve recognition for blackness in an alternative narrative of modernity by relating ‘counterhistories’ from vantage points in the past that have hitherto been ignored (Baker, et al. 1996: 6). In contrast to what is essentially a rewriting of monochromatic history, the Singapore state’s embrace of multiracialism means that anti-racism (but not anti-racialism) is ostensibly an immanent component of nation-building from the moment of full independence. From the start then, this postcolonial multiracialism enshrines a selective pluralism with the assignation and ascription of racial identity which all citizens must have and which they inherit from their fathers. The patrilineal inheritance of race foregrounds the extent to which claiming a racial identity in official terms is not largely a matter of personal choice in Singapore, a point seen most clearly in the case of children from mixed-race marriages who cannot automatically, for example, use a hyphenated or hybrid racial category to describe themselves within the bureaucratic machinery of the state. As a prescriptive means of social organization, multiracialism tends to elide differences within each racial group as the individual subject from any one group almost always assumes by default a symbolic role, representing and standing for the larger community. At the same time as such intra-racial homogenization occurs, multiracialism in Singapore also solidifies racial boundaries in the course of administratively and politically recognizing and celebrating the differences between races. Thus rejecting the ‘melting-pot’ model of integration for society, Singapore’s model of multiracialism approximates instead what David Theo Goldberg (1994b: 7) in writing about the genealogy of multiculturalism from an assimilative monoculturalism in the United States calls ‘managed multiculturalisms’. The incommensurability between racial groups and the rigidity of their Pick and mix for a global city 73 separation as seen in Singaporean multiracialism stands in contrast, for example, to Charles Taylor’s (1994) notion of liberal multiculturalism, which, as elaborated in the book’s Introduction, allows for the potential transformation of individual constituent cultures. The fact that in Singapore multiracialism and multiculturalism are terms which tend to be viewed synonymously, conflated, and used interchangeably is not accidental. It reflects an essentialist mode of thinking linked inextricably to a hypostasizing of race, and means that even when speaking of an Indian or Malay ‘culture’, for example, more often than not one is still dealing with a racial core from which ‘culture’ is conceived as a natural extension. The racialized nature of public discourse and thinking in Singapore is closely captured in the French scholar Colette Guillaumin’s (1995: 30) apprehension of racism’s symbolic power, its ability to confer ‘irreversibility’ on a society’s ‘reading of reality’ by essentializing its people and their actions. In Singapore, this crystallization of people and practices into racial essences, also presumes, particularly for the Indians and Chinese, a high degree of racial identification with the so-called original homeland spaces of India and China respectively. The principle of equivalence, selectively encoding race, culture, history and specific spaces like a series of close-fitting Chinese boxes, underlines multiracialism’s high level of ideological congruence. In so far as Singaporean postcolonial multiracialism is about guaranteeing equal rights and treatment for the different racial groups on the basis of equal worth, it is also, however, about maintaining the relative population strength of each racial segment of CMIO. The state sticks scrupulously to this ‘racial arithmetic’ (Yeoh and Chang 2001: 1041) as is apparent, for example, from its distribution of public housing according to specific racial proportions and the pedantic use of multiracial images in school textbooks. The planned precision of multiracialism as a policy thus seems ideologically in sync with what Cherian George (2005a) has termed ‘calibrated coercion’, the generally judicious way in which the Singapore state exercises power, its preference for a restrained and intelligent use of force as opposed to brute violence and bloody repression. Postcolonial multiracialism ensures at the end of the day that a Chinese majority is maintained. It also ensures that Singaporeans take part in the political process and civil society as raced citizens while constituting a sense of incommensurability among the racial and cultural groups. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the formation of official community self-help groups for the provision of welfare services along ethnic and racial lines. Thus all Singaporean Chinese (or those so designated) are automatically made to contribute a small amount of their monthly income to the Chinese Development Assistance fund. Drawing attention away from the structural causes of poverty and the need for greater state intervention, while suggesting that inter-racial help is somehow less natural, the schemes of self-help groups promote the idea that like must help like. Given the entrenched and dominant place of postcolonial multiracialism in Singapore society then, what happens when cosmopolitanism is added to the mix? Translated from its component Greek words, to be a ‘cosmopolitan’ means to be a citizen of the world. As a philosophical stance, cosmopolitanism covers 74 A. Poon extensive ethical ground and may range from a politically disengaged international aesthetics to a universal identification and fellowship with all peoples regardless of nation. Although the two concepts of nationalism and cosmopolitanism were not conceived as mutually exclusive terms (cosmopolitanism being the older word), in the nineteenth century, the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ was often apprehended in dia- lectical opposition to nationalism and patriotism (Cheah and Robbins 1998: 233). The cosmopolitan subject as a global citizen has traditionally connoted privilege, leisure, aesthetic distance, and worldliness. In this regard, the nineteenth-century British gentleman for whom the Grand Tour of continental Europe and beyond was a requisite part of a proper education and the process of accruing cultural capital comes readily to mind. At the other end of the spectrum, cosmopolitanism can also invoke a universal and totalizing humanism that cuts across the artificial and seemingly debilitating provincial boundaries of nation, race, ethnicity, tribe, and local cultures. In this way, as both traditionally dominant meanings show, cosmopolitanism has always embodied a tension between ‘elitism and egalitarianism’ (ibid.: 268). More recent critical attempts to resuscitate the term and recuperate it to more radical ends have resulted in the coining of the term ‘cosmopolitics’ in an attempt to foreground the idea of multiple and historically situated cosmopolitanisms and render evident the various political investments in the term. Repudiating a monolithic sense of the term by calling for an awareness of how the cosmopolitan experience may be different for disparate groups of people, James Clifford has insisted on the presence of what he calls ‘discrepant cosmopolitanisms’ (ibid.: 365). Thus it is not only the white colonial traveller who is cosmopolitan but the non-white servants and porters who made the journey as well; not only the Western anthropologist but the Third World native informant; and not only the voluntary migrant but the refugee displaced by war and natural disaster. Attention to such subaltern cosmopolitanisms is also closely tethered to what Walter Mignolo (2000) has characterized as border thinking, a mode of thinking conducive to a critical and dialogic cosmopolitanism from the perspective of coloniality/modernity that is polycentric rather than Eurocentric. The attempts by scholars to rehabilitate cosmopolitanism disclose various possibilities for political and critical action, which, broadly speaking, constitute a general thrust towards an intensified understanding of the complexities of different cultures and a belief in scale-expanding agency. Thus, directly tackling the web of meanings that forms traditional cosmopolitanism, Bruce Robbins writes, ‘The most generous and useful way to begin rethinking cosmopolitanism, it seems to me, is neither as ideal unplaceableness nor as sordid elitism, but as a way of relativizing and problematizing the scale and the units of democracy’ (Cheah and Robbins 1998: 261). The Singapore state’s appropriation of the term in its quest for global city status, however, leaves many of the more political and radical possibilities of cosmopolitanism untouched. The state’s silence on human rights, civil liberties, and the practices of citizenship when discussing cosmopolitanism may be seen to serve as a kind of determinist absence, an identity-constituting lack, wherein these deliberate exclusions are as constructive of national space and being as the state’s more overt market-driven prescriptions for cosmopolitan living. Pick and mix for a global city 75 The Singapore state’s embrace of cosmopolitanism as the social and cultural answer to the market rationalities and economic dictates of the new millennium has been identified by anthropologist Aihwa Ong as part of neoliberal governmentality. Ong (2006: 3) defines ‘neoliberalism’ as a ‘technology of government’ where ‘governing activities are recast as nonpolitical and nonideological problems that need technical solutions.’ State intervention is reduced to a form of problem-solving and tied to an enhancement of biopower with the aim of optimizing resources and the utility and self-management capacity of the citizenry. In the case of Singapore, the state’s grafting of a particular notion of cosmopolitanism onto postcolonial multiracialism may be said to yield a neoliberal multiculturalism that for all its advertised openness is nevertheless premised on a strategically selective and circumscribed cultural diversity. Indeed, part of the hegemonic force of neoliberal multiculturalism lies precisely in the elision of its class bias in the types of mobile, flexible subjects it privileges. The point about neoliberal multiculturalism’s limited pluralism is significant and is intended to temper Ong’s specific reading of Singapore’s attempt to be a technopreneurial and biomedical hub within an alleged ‘baroque ecology’ that finds an analogue in the image of the diverse and dynamic tropical canopy (ibid.: 180). Ong’s analysis appears at times too exuberantly caught up with the ostensible object of her commentary – the state’s vision for global Singapore. She concludes that ‘[t]he “Asian values” discourse is dead, replaced by enunciations of the effervescent ecosystem’ (ibid.: 194). I would argue, however, that there is a greater degree of (forced) continuity between past and present state action in Singapore than Ong would appear to allow. Although neoliberal multiculturalism is presented as a rational response to global forces, it is also less coherent than it appears. When viewed alongside other policy announcements by the state – those on bicultural education, for example – what emerges is the state’s anxious continued investment in essentialist thinking about citizen subjects while grappling with the multifarious demands of a cosmopolitan episteme and sociality it initiated but cannot fully control. For my purposes here, central to any effective critique of state-directed cosmopolitanism in Singapore must first be the recognition that in mapping out its plans for a global city, the state is also actively constructing and normalizing a vision of the world within which to embed the island nation. The point is worth making because the act of such ‘worlding’ goes to the heart of the project to remake Singapore into a cosmopolitan global city, a move represented in public discourse as inevitable, desirable, and above all, pragmatic. Nothing short of the continuing legitimation of state power is at stake since traditionally the state’s successful performance of rational government is predicated on its ability to respond to ‘reality’. The language of pragmatic, rational government now meshes with neoliberal rhetoric about the allegedly neutral and objective demands of the global market and technology. In public discourse and state pronouncements, globalization – and specifically the view of globalization as the radical transformation of time and space as a result primarily of the movement and ‘flow’ of capital, technology and knowledge – is enshrined as the undeniable feature of an unalterable present and predetermined future. The options open to Singaporean citizens are presented in 76 A. Poon stark, dichotomous terms: either buy in and play the game or lose out. Agency is clearly circumscribed and few, if any, alternative pathways are presented in this fa- talistic view of history and historical processes which demands that the only rational response is the adoption of a (state-determined) consensus in the face of a common challenge. The Singapore state’s act of ‘worlding’ proffers a view of a fast-paced, interconnected and competitive globalized world that is hardly unfamiliar. What accounts for the power of such an essentially corporatist conceptualization of globalization is a compelling language and imagery of flow and interconnection. Commenting on the rhetorically seductive nature of this language, Anna Tsing (2001) has reiterated the need for scholarly critical detachment that interrogates the way such language constitutes not truth description but localized cultural claims about scale by particular parties with specific vested interests in notions of globality, the local, and the regional. A language of flow focused on money obscures the institutional and structural conditions under which claims about scale in relation to globalization may be asserted: ‘We describe the landscape imagined within these claims rather than the culture and politics of scale making’ (Tsing 2001: 108). The imagery of circulation and movement often overlooks the ways in which permutations of race, class, gender and nationality work to create different types of flow, exploitative relationships, varied access to travel, and multiple possibilities for culture-making. Neil Lazarus (2004: 27), countering the rhetoric of inevitability and depoliticization that dogs discussions of globalization and anti-globalization, has also argued that the logic of inevitability and ‘technological determinism’ that such language enshrines glosses over notions of structural inequality and the material links between the small segment of the world’s population profiting from the current capitalist order and the vast majority living in poverty. In Singapore, at the same time as the state works systematically through education and immigration policies to facilitate the movement and settlement opportunities for suitably cosmopolitan subjects, it also routinely bars a specific group of people, namely foreign labour (like construction workers and domestic helpers), from the possibility of staking a claim to cosmopolitanism. As we shall see in greater detail later, the state adopts a bifocal view of which bodies within the territorial borders of the nation may be construed as mobile, permanent, or transient. This directly affects the creation of new political spaces and the formation of transnational political links, alliances, and coalitions, relationships which tend in public discourse to be embedded either in the financial circuits of high-end global capital or in the destructive form of the terrorist network. In the Singaporean context, the state’s embrace of corporatist globalization means not only that cosmopolitanism is seen as an inevitable goal but that it is championed and represented primarily in terms of a change in consumerist culture. In the state’s plans for Singapore to become a global city like New York and London (Singapore Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts 1999), being seen as cosmopolitan is deemed critical for attracting foreign talent. A cosmopolitan global city in the consumerist sense is a space for one to enjoy the cuisine, customs and festivals of various ethnicities and races who serve to provide Pick and mix for a global city 77 ‘colour’ by their presence. From this angle, becoming cosmopolitan involves nothing more than acquiring a taste for the ‘foreign’ or exotic products and services. This is what Ulf Hannerz calls ‘cosmopolitanism with a happy face’ (quoted in Nugent and Vincent 2004: 71). Attending such cosmopolitan consumption, with its suggestion of already-formed cultures, is usually a language about tolerance of diversity and the celebration of difference, a language shorn of any political radicalism with an attendant anti-racism and privilege-attacking agenda. Shrinking cosmopolitanism to consumerism brings explicitly to the fore the nettlesome issue of class privilege and egalitarianism. Inflected locally, this pits the cosmopolitan subject against a figure like the ‘heartlander’, that symbolically resonant figure in Singaporean public discourse who usually hails from the lower or middle class, is possibly more comfortable in his ‘mother tongue’ than English, but who invariably lives in public housing. In contrast to cosmopolitan detachment, the heartlander is characterized by rootedness and national attachment. The heartlander is a key component of the PAP government’s electoral power base and is commonly viewed as having more parochial concerns about so-called ‘bread-and-butter’ issues. In this respect, he is a cause for concern, vulnerable to being alienated if unable to gain the necessary social and cultural capital needed to appreciate cosmopolitanism, let alone be cosmopolitan. The state’s awareness of the potential social divisions and conflict in the transformation of Singapore into a global city is reflected in the attempts by key political figures to harness, with arguable success, an emotionally loaded language of nationalist primitivism. This is seen, for example, when former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (1999) refers to Singapore as a ‘multiracial tribe’ in a move to describe national attachment in primal, pre- or even anti-modern terms, to express it as a raw gut feeling rather than consciously chosen affiliation. The rhetoric of sentiment and national feeling is also clearly evident in the so-called ‘Singapore 21’ report, an ideal vision of and proposed roadmap for Singapore in the twenty-first century commissioned by Goh to build the ‘heartware’ of Singapore (Singapore Government 2002). The members of the committee, drawn from different sectors of public life in Singapore, affirm the need to develop a ‘common passion’ for the nation and a strong ‘Singapore heartbeat.’ The state’s approach to foreseeable tensions has been to present cosmopolitanism as the natural outcome of postcolonial multiracialism, which in turn is set up as the nation’s ‘heritage’. Continuities are thus always drawn between a (Chinese) immigrant past and the present arrival of ‘foreign talent’ to Singapore for work. The result is a timeless and universal story of money and labour that glosses over the historical and materialist circumstances for each period of labour movement. Despite the state’s best efforts, however, fault lines remain. For all its manifestations and meanings, cosmopolitanism invariably implies a certain cultural openness and transgression of boundaries which is fundamentally at odds with the relatively closed nature of postcolonial multiracialism and its neoliberal avatar in Singapore. The forms of racial and cultural hybridity that are the expected features of a cosmopolitan society might herald the diminished salience of racial categories. Cosmopolitanism may also bring with it the prospect of multiple affiliations, fissuring the citizenry’s identity, producing what Homi Bhabha (in Bhabha and 78 A. Poon Comaroff 2002: 38) has called ‘political citizens’ on one level – those forming the synchronous community generally compliant with state demands – who may also be ‘cultural citizens’ with affiliations which revolve around sexual orientation, or religious beliefs, for example, that may conflict with the state’s agenda for modernization. In Singapore, the cosmopolitan subject is primarily conceived of in apolitical terms and there is a sense of quietism about state-sponsored cosmopolitanism and neoliberal multiculturalism. Singaporeans are required to be cosmopolitan without embracing the activism and the state of being implicated in moral action that being a full citizen of the world might warrant. While the state might issue more calls for alternative views and discussion, certain areas, especially racial issues, continue to remain ‘non-negotiable’ (Teo 2005) and consensus must ultimately prevail. As the Singaporean writer Catherine Lim (2005) has noted, despite all the talk about change, there has been little concession to the idea that political openness should form an inalienable part of the new global Singapore. This has been borne out by recent events such as Singapore’s refusal to allow public demonstrations by activists and various non-governmental groups during its hosting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in September 2006. Former Prime Minister Goh’s explanation that the state could not afford to allow demonstrations by foreigners when their own citizens were prohibited from staging such public protests serves as a glaring example of the state’s depoliticized cosmopolitanism: his response sidesteps the fundamental question of citizens’ rights and freedoms in a ‘reasonable’ bid for consistency at the level of policy (Straits Times, 10 September 2006). The point here is not so much to illustrate the discrep- ancy between state pronouncements and everyday life, between the cosmopolitan ideal and the state’s neoliberal multiculturalism, as to suggest the co-presence of different realities, possibilities, discourses, and even silences in order to cast into sharper relief the tensions and contradictions which result from the intersection of contingent state power and uneven global processes as the state seeks continually to define ideas about nationality and globality. These tensions are further apparent in such areas of Singapore life as the educational focus on biculturalism and the state’s strenuous efforts to control non-elite foreign workers.

From bilingualism to biculturalism Underpinning multiracialism from the moment of Singapore’s independence in 1965 was a bilingual policy that whatever its mutations since has had the effect of alloying language with race. Thus it was and is still very much the case that Singaporean children study English as a first language and their ‘mother’ tongue (still largely identified according to their official race) as a second language. Yet, since 1999, an acknowledgement of partial failure in the bilingual policy especially with regard to the dominant racial group – the Chinese – has led to changes in the Chinese language curriculum to allow for alternative syllabi to meet the needs of students at different levels of language competency and potential. A less demand- ing syllabus is now available as an option for students from English-speaking Pick and mix for a global city 79 homes weak in Mandarin. At the same time as the teaching of Mandarin has been rendered more flexible to accommodate different learning paths, however, the policy of bilingualism has also been adjusted by the state to emphasize the need to groom a bicultural Chinese elite from the ranks of a general bilingual population. Underlining the push towards biculturalism is the recognition of two ‘facts’: first, that not all can be effectively bilingual; and second, that speaking the language is not enough for effective engagement with another culture. ‘Bilingualism,’ according to former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, ‘gets us through the front door, but it is only through biculturalism that we can reach deep inside China and work with them’ (quoted in Chua 2004). The aim now is to produce ‘a few hundred students’ each year capable of mastering a higher level of Mandarin and developing a deeper understanding of Chinese history and culture in order to forge stronger business ties with China. Here, it is evident that market realities have once again demanded policy change in alignment with neoliberal logic. Similarly but to a less voluble and visible extent, the other two racial groups (the Malays and the Indians) have also been encouraged to engage the Islamic world and India respectively. That the equations are not exactly homologous is telling – ‘Indian’ corresponds to ‘India’ like ‘Chinese’ to ‘China’ while ‘Malay’ corresponds to ‘Islam’ – and discloses the way the problematic place of the Malay minority disrupts the neatness of the postcolonial multiracial model. The new policy adjustments and announcements on second languages may be seen to represent a tacit acknowledgement that the environment, rather than one’s ‘natural’ race alone, has a large determining role to play in the learning of languages. And yet, a fundamentally biological understanding of race – a particular kind of racial episteme – continues to inform these policy changes linked to postcolonial multiracialism. Thus, while there is recognition of the role of culture and environment in the shaping of individuals and their learning of ‘mother tongue’ languages, there remains nevertheless the sense that each individual subject pos- sesses an essentially ‘true’ racial identity. It follows, then, that while biculturalism does not preclude a non-Chinese student from studying Mandarin, for example, the ‘rightness’ of a Chinese knowing about Chinese culture and being able to speak Mandarin is undisputed. It is little wonder then that in the public discourse on biculturalism, a prominent Straits Chinese historical figure, Dr Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957) – community leader, member of the Straits Settlement Legislative Council, and philanthropist – is held up as a role model of desirable Chineseness. Following a speech by Lee Kuan Yew at the Nanyang Technological University’s Centre for Chinese Language and Culture in which he hailed Lim Boon Keng as ‘an outstanding example of a bilingual and bicultural Singaporean Chinese’, the Straits Times promptly published a full-page biographical account of Lim (Cheong 2004). Lim was a British-trained doctor actively involved in the Confucian revival of the early twentieth century in Singapore. Having grown up speaking English and Baba Malay, the language of the Straits-born Chinese, Lim has been valorised for strenu- ously seeking in his adult life to ‘return’ to his Chinese roots through dedicated study of Mandarin and Chinese culture. He was for one the first to start Mandarin classes in Singapore for Straits-born Chinese like himself. He was also derided by 80 A. Poon Lu Xun, the famous Chinese writer and leading figure of the revolutionary May Fourth Movement, when he was president of Amoy (Xiamen) University, as ‘a Chinese of British nationality who cannot avoid speaking of Confucius whenever he opens his mouth’ (quoted in Wang 1991: 156). The irony of Lim having to work hard at being Chinese, far from suggesting the contingent and performative nature of race, is hardly ever foregrounded in public accounts of his life. Instead, Lim’s story is used paradoxically to naturalize the relationship between Chineseness as a racial category and such unquestionable acts and practices of Chineseness as the speaking of Mandarin. His ‘sinicization’ is seen as a laudable attempt to recover an essentially Chinese and original self that birthplace and upbringing, those accidents of history, had somehow obscured. A more contemporary role model of sinicization and the one responsible for publicly hailing Lim as an exemplary bicultural subject is Lee Kuan Yew himself. From the start of his tenure as Prime Minister to his position now as Minister Mentor, Lee has played a key role in the struggle over the appropriate signs of Chineseness for Singapore and has been closely identified with the establishment of Mandarin as the natural language of Chinese Singaporeans (Shepherd 2005; see Goh, this volume). Responsible for spearheading the ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign in 1979 which sought to promote the use of ‘high-culture’ Mandarin over the use of other Chinese ‘dialects’, Lee has spoken publicly about his difficulties in learning Mandarin throughout his political career. Lee’s (2004) relating of his own experiences – teaching himself Mandarin, learning from a series of teachers, and struggling to make political speeches in the language – is part of his self-fashioned transformation from political leader to elder statesman and ‘mentor’ figure in the public imagination. It is a transformation that reveals the evolution of state paternalism in Singapore as he discloses, ‘I have recounted my personal experience in learning languages and at critical moments of my life to show that I know its difficulties’ (Lee 2004). His doggedness has been celebrated in a book meant quite clearly to serve as an inspiration to Chinese Singaporeans (Chua 2005). Even as Lee openly acknowledges how the learning of Mandarin was for him a matter of political expedience, it is at the same time very much normalized as a natural move, an act of recovery in an elaboration of the ‘biology is destiny’ idea. As in the case of Lim Boon Keng, Lee’s story illustrates how racial and cultural identity is presented unalterably as a question of being rather than, as Stuart Hall suggests, a relational process of ‘positioning’ and an ‘unstable [point] of identification or suture’ (Hall 1989: 213). In Lee’s view, English is essential for making a living but it is the mother tongue language that provides identity and cultural ballast. Affirming the need for mother tongue languages, he notes that this is what will give people their ‘identity and [make] our society vigorous and distinctive’ (Lee 2004). Lee has also reiterated that Singapore must have ‘a core of the Chinese-educated who can regenerate and sustain the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-reading habits of our population’:

Our homegrown core will be reinforced by a continuing flow of the completely Chinese-educated from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong who will come to work Pick and mix for a global city 81 here as work permit, employment pass holders, as permanent residents, and some as citizens. And the number of Chinese tourists will be increasing. (Ibid.)

The need for a ‘core’ again emphasizes the difficulty of escaping the clutches of a cultural logic premised on unspoken notions of authenticity and purity. The fine- tuned differentiation of Chineseness within the Singaporean Chinese population suggested by the notion of a ‘core’ reveals the limits of neoliberal multiculturalism even as a cosmopolitan society is envisaged. Lee’s comments efface the possible differences among foreign native Chinese speakers while suggesting that a more cosmopolitan society would ideally merely reinforce the divisions of the postcolonial multiracial model. Defending the changes to the teaching and learning of Mandarin, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has also affirmed that the bilingual policy is ‘as valid as ever’ and ‘at the heart of our identity’. He has asserted Singapore’s status as a fundamentally ‘Asian’ society, adding, ‘we need to work harder to ensure that the next generation retains [sic] a sense of self and cultural identity’ (quoted in Teo 2004). These pronouncements, concurrent with calls for global city status, belie the continued adherence to racialized ways of thinking which underlie the CMIO model of postcolonial multiracialism and which have historically proven useful to state power. They hint at the selectiveness of the cultural diversity the state is willing to contemplate and point to elided anxieties about the possibilities of re-affiliation and disaffiliation that come with cosmopolitanism, possibilities which may challenge state hegemony and official notions of national identity. The emphasis on biculturalism, in other words, reflects the state’s attempt to come to grips with a changing cultural and racial landscape that it has hitherto managed to manicure in certain ways, but which now demands ever more refined and striated forms of state power.

Discrepant cosmopolitanisms: foreign workers in Singapore The focus on biculturalism represents one of the main tensions in the state’s neoliberal multiculturalism: its fear of possible cosmopolitan rootlessness and deracination on the one hand and its aspiration for Singapore to be a global city on the other. A similar paradoxical tension attends the state’s classification and categorization of foreign labour within the nation’s territorial boundaries. Negotiating between varying permutations of race, class, nationality, and social capital such as educational qualifications, the state places limits on cosmopolitanism to maintain a selective racial and cultural pluralism. In the first place, like many advanced first-world economies, Singapore is reliant on a host of foreigners with different skills, educational levels, and expertise to run its economy. In fact, approximately one million of its 4.5-million-strong population are non-citizens or permanent residents. Foreign labour in Singapore is commonly recognized as being divided into essentially two categories: foreign workers and foreign ‘talent’. The latter group refers to the ‘employment pass’ holders or highly educated and mobile professionals, entrepreneurs, and corporate elites while in the former group are 82 A. Poon ‘work permit’ holders, or those who work in low- and semi-skilled jobs mostly in the domestic and construction industries. These two groups may be seen to exhibit James Clifford’s ‘discrepant cosmopolitanisms’. They bring different cultures and perspectives to Singapore but the state has put in place various measures on immigration and employment which effectively bar work permit holders from claiming cosmopolitanism and the cultural capital associated with it (Yeoh 2004). In contrast, the government often calls upon the citizenry to accept foreign talent as inevitable and vital to the nation’s continued survival and economic well-being (Peh 2006). As Wong Kan Seng, the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, observed in an interview, ‘Singaporeans today, really, should see it as being in their interests to welcome them [foreign talent]. Make them feel at home. Integrate them, help them integrate. If we don’t attract them, other countries are attracting them in large numbers’ (quoted in Teo 2005). In Singapore, the global talent referred to usually comes from ‘Malaysia, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Britain, Europe, South Africa, Canada and the US’ (Brooks 2002). It is to this group of people that the state advertises and brands Singapore as ‘a global city of opportunities’, ‘an attractive place to live, work and play’ (Singapore Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts 2006). Collectively, the state’s many public pronouncements, the Immigration Act, and the regulatory measures for work permit holders regarding marriage and reproduction amount to a bifurcated governmentality that results in the constitution and embodiment of foreign workers and foreign talent in specific racialized and classed ways. Repeatedly in public discourse, absorbing foreign talent is likened to a salutary injection, an infusion into the current population mix, not least gene pool, that would help create a creative and vibrant living environment while foreign workers undertaking low-status, low-wage jobs are allied with the potential for disease and social disruption. As early as 1997, during his National Day Rally Speech, then Prime Minister Goh (1997) declared, ‘We must therefore welcome the infusion of knowledge which foreign talent will bring. Singapore must become a cosmopolitan, global city, an open society where people from many lands can feel at home.’ In this and other similar exhortations, it is implicitly assumed that foreign talent reinforces the racial categories of postcolonial multiracialism which merely expand rather than undergo radical transformation to accommodate the newcomers. In this regard, the biologically -inflected vocabulary the state uses to naturalize the changes it must convince its citizenry to accept is hardly incidental. Despite official exhortations to welcome foreign talent, it has become, predictably enough, all too apparent that the arrival of such talent fuels competition at the workplace and creates added pressure on jobs. Already, resentment by Singaporean citizens has forced some discussion of what citizenship entails especially since foreign talent is actively courted and given the prospect of citizenship without apparently needing to discharge some of their duties to the nation-state (like doing national military service, for example). Especially when foreign talent refers to Chinese and Indian professionals, the stress on the presumption of racial identification that underlies postcolonial multiracialism is intensified. The racial intermixing and hybrid cultural productions that must invariably come with Pick and mix for a global city 83 encouraging the presence of foreign talent would foreseeably also cause strain to the rigidity of the postcolonial multiracial model with its overly-neat distinctions between the races. In contrast to the welcome and flexible freedoms extended to foreign talent in Singapore, the state subjects low-wage foreign workers to stringent regulation and disciplinary control. Such control ensures that this group of migrant workers remains unintegrated into Singaporean society, and manifests itself most clearly in bio-policing measures which restrict reproduction and produce specific forms of embodiment. Take the case of foreign domestic workers, who number around 150,000 in Singapore with most hailing from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. These women are subject to half-yearly medical check-ups which include tests for pregnancy as well as for HIV infection. Those who do get pregnant almost invariably face immediate repatriation. The prohibition on pregnancy is listed in the ‘Conditions of Work Permits’ issued by the Ministry of Manpower alongside other injunctions against foreign domestic workers engaging in illegal or ‘immoral’ activities like the ‘breaking up’ of families (Singapore Ministry of Manpower 2006). Thus, what these conditions and regulations do is to construct the foreign domestic worker or maid as a promiscuous figure, always a potential threat to the family and the larger social fabric of the nation (Poon 2003). In the state’s eyes, the maid is incapable of regulating her own sexuality; that role and the more general work of surveillance must be undertaken by the employer since the latter is also required to put up a security bond of S$5,000 for her. The prohibition on getting pregnant and the risk of losing the security bond lead many employers to restrict their maids’ movements, or even confine them to the house or flat (Arshad 2005). Under the Marriage Restriction policy, work permit holders are also not allowed to marry Singaporeans or permanent residents without obtaining prior permission from the Ministry of Manpower. In a move that continues to stigmatize the foreign worker and advertise the state’s aversion to the worker’s presence, this regulation applies to former work permit holders even after they have left the country. The Manpower Minister’s explanation for this extreme measure is that it needs to prevent illegal immigration and a potential underclass from taking root in Singapore. By relaxing the law, the potential increase in the population given the number of work permit holders could ‘churn and change’ society (Au Yong 2005). In addition to the conditions against marriage and pregnancy, other requirements by the state for work permit holders constitute a specific disciplinary apparatus for everyday living. A work permit holder, as the very term suggests, must carry his pass, a physical card, with him at all times as he is subject to random searches by any public official. On the other hand, the employment pass holder has the permission to be in the country endorsed directly on his passport. Only at the airport or the causeway with Malaysia, the nation’s territorial borders, is the employment pass holder checked. He is otherwise a relatively free agent and mobile subject within the national territorial space. In addition, his family members may also obtain long-term social visit passes, a move calculated to facilitate ease of settlement in Singapore. In contrast, the work permit holder is constructed as a transient subject who must be reminded that his presence has been ‘permitted’ by the state. Illegal workers 84 A. Poon risk punishment by caning if caught. Corporal punishment in this way serves as a way of branding the body and is part and parcel of an overriding logic of selective embodiment and hypervisibility for low-wage and allegedly less skilled foreign workers. The state’s recognition and constitution of foreign talent allows these selectively appointed subjects to escape the processes of substantivization at work in the case of foreign workers. Using a panoply of methods to ensure the temporary presence of foreign workers in Singapore, the state also denies any claim that they might have on cosmopolitanism, and seeks to prevent their participation in civic life and their possible involvement in forming local as well as transnational political relationships. Yet, the mere fact of these workers’ presence means that the potential for counternarratives to the official programme and policies always exists; their historical agency might well provoke greater political consciousness among Singaporeans through intensified discussion about rights, citizenship, and race as well as increased participation in non-governmental organizations and civil society.

Conclusion In these two different aspects of social life in Singapore – the promotion of biculturalism and the treatment of foreign workers – we may discern the contradictions underpinning the state’s particular model of neoliberal multiculturalism: the opposing desires for both cosmopolitanism and the social control inherent in its traditional paradigm of postcolonial multiracialism. In its ostensible celebration of cultural difference, diversity, and variety, neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore gives the impression of being an open and inclusive system. Yet it appears thus by eliding the class bias and inequality that is intrinsic to its constitution. As a disciplinary apparatus, it helps define the global cosmopolitan subject by setting the racial, cultural and class parameters for its embodiment. Through such strategies as a selective immigration policy, uneven entitlement to rights, and an elitist education programme, neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore differentiates between citizens by valorizing them according to their economic contribution to the capitalist order. In its disciplinary function, Singapore’s model of neoliberal multiculturalism may be compared to its conceptual counterpart in South America, the geo-political space to which the term is perhaps more familiarly attached. In the 1990s, various South American indigenous groups managed to win greater state recognition for their cultural identity and gain certain cultural rights at the same time as the region witnessed an increase in the adoption of neoliberal capitalist policies (Webber 2007). While these developments in cultural status were important advances for indigenous peoples, they nevertheless tended to be of the kind that did not threaten neoliberal capitalist development (Hale 2002). In this manner, neoliberal multiculturalism has played a critical role in determining indigenous identity by affirming and giving official recognition only to certain aspects of indigenous culture. What might be said to distinguish neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore from its analogues in South America is the politics of cultural recognition. Whereas in Latin American states, institutionalized recognition of indigenous cultures Pick and mix for a global city 85 under neoliberal multiculturalism has replaced previous assimilation policies, in Singapore, state recognition of the validity of race and cultural differences has never been lacking. The act of recognition enshrined in the racial governmentality of Singaporean postcolonial multiracialism was part of independence nationalism; indeed, it has gone hand-in-hand with the country’s economic development and climb up the global capitalist value chain from export-driven industrialization to a knowledge and service economy. In this way, the Singapore state or the party that has dominated the government since independence, the PAP, has always intuited if not fully understood, through its pragmatic, instrumentalist governing logic, the link between multiculturalism and economic development. Is resistance to the present system or a more genuinely inclusive and equitable multiculturalism possible in Singapore? An answer to this may perhaps be found by contemplating the state’s fear with regard to the brave new world of Singapore as global city that it envisages. The state’s continued reliance on essentialist thinking and the carefully circumscribed nature of its policies suggest its fear of the potentially destabilizing, centrifugal power of the cosmopolitanism it has been encouraging. It is a fear that is likely to demand more challenging responses as globalization proceeds to alter the salience of notions like ‘nation’, ‘community’, and ‘the local’, and the unleashed ideological force and practices of cosmopolitanism produce different notions of liveable sociality as well as paradoxical, unstable and ever-shifting meanings of race, class, cultural identification, and citizenship. New solidarities and networks as well as new political spaces look set as well to arise from the different mobilities, circuits, and social actors brought into play by cosmopolitanism. Within this potent mix, the need for critical scholarship to analyse the continuities and breaks in state power as it is transformed so as to better apprehend the pressures faced and resist the repressive foreclosure of political choices (including possible alternatives to capitalism) is crucial. Only then can we offer other discursive possibilities and alternative imaginings of greater justice and political action. Only then can we reconstellate the norms for engaged citizenship while striving to realize the notion that ‘[c]osmopolitanism is infinite ways of being’ (Pollock, et al. 2000: 588). 5 Makkal Sakthi The Hindraf effect, race and postcolonial democracy in Malaysia

Vijay Devadas

The Hindraf effect Let me begin with a potted summary of Hindraf, a coalition of 30 non-governmental Hindu organizations, to provide background information on the movement and the consolidation of the notion of makkal sakthi or people’s power. On the morning of 25 November 2007, it was reported that a significant number of people had gathered in Kuala Lumpur at a rally organized by Hindraf to protest the unofficial state policy of Hindu temple demolition, the colonial wrong committed on the Indian community, and the encroachment of Shariah law (Islamic law) into the lives of the citizenry. The actual number of people who attended the rally is in debate: ABC News (2007) reported that 10,000 attended, while others such as USA Today (2007) approximated 5,000. Numbers aside, the protest marks a significant moment within postcolonial Malaysian democracy in that the country has enjoyed a relatively uninterrupted period of sound race relations. The last significant race- based politics or protest took place on 13 May 1969 when Sino-Malay race riots led to the declaration of a state of emergency and the suspension of Parliament until 1971, after which the state adopted an aggressive affirmative action policy under the New Economic Policy initiative. This is a policy that privileges the bumiputeras (‘princes of the soil’ or original inhabitants), the majority, dominant Malay community. In that sense, the organization of a rally, very much premised upon racial difference, in country that has suppressed the question of racial and cultural differences is significant insofar as it threatens the fabric of the nation. The gathering for the rally took place, ironically, near the Petronas Twin Towers, named after Malaysia’s National Oil Company, a visual symbol of Malaysia’s progress and development. The choice of the space of the Twin Towers and its reconstitu- tion as the ground for protest reconfigures a significant public space, the marker of postcolonial progress and modernity, to highlight the lack of progress amongst the Indian and Hindu community and challenge that which the Towers stand for. On the same day, there was also a gathering at Batu Caves, and again there was dispute over the number of people who attended. The staging of the rally at Batu Caves is significant in that this space holds a special place both in the Hindu Indian Malaysian’s imaginary and the larger Indian diasporic imaginary: the festival of Thaipusam – a Hindu festival celebrated mainly by the Tamil community to Makkal Sakthi 87 commemorate both the birth of the deity Murugan and the vanquishing of an evil demon – has been celebrated at Batu Caves since 1892, one year after a temple was constructed and a statue of the deity was installed by K. Thamboosamy Pillai, an Indian trader. It was reported that in 2007, the festival attracted more than 1.5 million pilgrims to the Caves. In addition to the religious significance, the area has a predominantly Indian population with a history of settlement in the areas surrounding Batu Caves. The reports on the rally at the Petronas Towers continue with claims that participants carried life size portraits of Queen Elizabeth and banners petitioning the British High Commission, portraits of Mahatma Gandhi, and the Malaysian flag. The visual collage of the rally brings together a variety of complementary and competing narratives to demonstrate the complexity of the event. The appeal to the Queen and the High Commission is a claim based on historical grievances and wrongs. More precisely, it is about the history of British colonization, the episode of indenture, and the failure of the British to protect minority rights in the Federal Constitution when independence was granted. The use of the image of Gandhi functions to animate the diasporic connection with India (and the Indian independence struggle) as well as to mark the protest as a non-violent expression affirming the principles of satyagraha or non-violence, a principle that finds its source in Hindu philosophy. It is also a salient reminder that the postcolonial nation-state continues to function as a colonizing machine: after all, the image of Gandhi conjures the independence struggle over the British colonial masters. The inclusion of the national flag, that material sign of the power of the state apparatus against which the protest is carried out, while seemingly contradictory because it is against state racism that the demonstrations are held, is in fact a politically astute move that foregrounds the concerns of the Indian/Hindu population as concerns of the citizens of Malaysia and not simply as those of a migrant community. To rephrase the words of Paul Gilroy (1991a): the flags held up at the rally remind us that it is not where you are from that matter, but where you are at. The state’s response to the gathering on that day was, as expected, brutal and repressive. This comes as no surprise, considering that the Malaysian state operates in a semi-democratic fashion. That is to say, ‘while elections are held regularly in Malaysia, and opposition parties win parliamentary seats, civil liberties are so truncated beforehand that government turnovers have normally been difficult to imagine’ (Case 1997: 81). It is precisely because the nation-state operates under the regime of semi-democracy that the non-violent rally, mobilised around the question of civil liberties, was quickly dealt with by the police with the use of tear-gas and water-cannon to disperse the crowd. As reported by Agence France-Presse, several demonstrators were beaten by the police and bundled into police vans. The truncation of civil liberties through the repressive state apparatuses on that day follows the arrests of three prominent Hindraf members on 23 November, two days before the rally: P. Uthayakumar, Waytha Moorthy and V.S. Ganapati Rao were arrested and charged under the Sedition Act, an Act put in place by the colonial authorities of British Malaya to control and manage anti-colonial opposition and one that was later adopted into the statue books of the independent postcolonial 88 V. Devadas state. The postcolonial nation-state’s take-up of the Sedition Act also included provisions criminalizing the questioning of the postcolonial nation’s constitution, namely those pertaining to the Malaysian social contract such as Article 153, which guarantees special rights for the bumiputera and other indigenous populations. However, the charges of sedition against the three Hindraf members were dropped as the courts could not prove that they had incited racial hatred. But less than one month later, on 13 December, the Malaysian government arrested five Hindraf leaders under the undemocratic Internal Security Act, another Act that was inherited from the colonial masters and underwritten into the Malaysian constitution in 1960 under Article 149, which allows the detention without trial of persons for a period not exceeding two years, whose actions are deemed as prejudicial to the security of the nation. Those detained under the Security Act, the H5 as they are known, are Hindraf legal adviser P. Uthayakumar, lawyers M. Manoharan, R. Kenghadharan, V.S. Ganapati Rao and organising secretary T. Vasanthakumar. They are still under detention without trial as I write. It is against this backdrop of discriminatory state practices that Hindraf emerged and it has had a significant impact on the Malaysian political landscape. At the recent general elections on 8 March 2008 the dominant one-party multiracial governing party, the Barisan Nasional that has been in power since independence, lost its two-thirds majority in the worst-ever election results for the ruling coalition. While it might be shortsighted to claim that the Hindraf effect alone was responsible for the shift in power, it was, nevertheless, a significant factor. The emergence of Hindraf, the solidarity that it formed and its impact on Malaysian political life provides material instances of the failure of state strategies of managing cultural diversity. Given this, I wish to explore how the multicultural citizenry responds, through the digital platform, to the claims of a once migrant Hindu Indian community who make up about 80 per cent of the 1.8 million Indian population. I have chosen blogs as the site for analysis precisely because the dialogue and conversations on this platform circumvent the regulated and controlled national media terrain (George 2005b). Before I analyse the blogs, I first discuss postcolonial race relations in Malaysia to situate the Hindraf effect, particularly as an effect that has been brought to fruition because of the use of a system of ethno-communal privileging underpinned by ‘a new mode of political optimiza- tion: neoliberalism’ (Ong 2006: 3).

Postcolonial race relations: multiculturalism, bumiputeraism and neoliberalism Postcolonial Malaysia provides an interesting instance of state management of cultural and racial differences through recourse to two discourses: multiculturalism and ethno-communalism, specifically through the privileging of the bumiputera population, the majority Malay community. While on the surface these two approaches seem to be contradictory because the former calls for equal recognition of cultural and racial differences and diversity while the latter is premised upon a discriminatory practice, a closer examination reveals that there are not. This is Makkal Sakthi 89 because both multiculturalism and an ethnic-privileging rationality are underpinned by the political technology of neoliberalism. Following separation from Singapore, the BN rigorously enforced the ‘Bargain of 1957’ legislature ‘which maintained Malay political and cultural hegemony and safeguarded Malay ‘special privileges‘in return for the right of the non-Malay groups to citizenship in the new independent Malaya’ (Khoo 1999: 131). In other words, the issue was resolved by privileging the rights of the bumiputeras (‘sons of the soil’) while ‘the recognition of the principle of jus soli was the only blandishment offered to non-Malay sensitivities’ (Bedlington 1978: 92). And as Watson (1996: 300) observes, the official policy at this time called for a sense of Malay-sian nationalism. This legislature not only safeguarded the privilege of the indigenous Malay population, but also ensured that, through a policy of cultural privileging, the economic chasm between the Malay community and the other ‘races’, particularly the Chinese who formed ‘the majority of local capitalists’ would be bridged (Khoo 1999: 132). However, as the historical developments proved, such a strategy remained insufficient. The hegemonising of ‘Malay-sian nationalism’ did not prove to be a socially workable contract as demonstrated in the culmination of the May 1969 inter-ethnic riots. Following this, the Malaysian government shifted its focus to develop ‘a new technocratic government committed to “restructuring society” along ethnic lines’ (ibid.: 133). The New Economic Policy was implemented in 1971 and was ‘designed to tackle the class-ethnic conflicts of the 1960s’ (ibid.: 54). The initiative thus turned the focus toward capital maximization as a means of ethnic bargaining with the aim of ‘distribut[ing] a larger proportion of economic growth to the Bumiputera … but without expropriating the assets which already belonged to the existing domestic Chinese capitalist class’ (ibid.: 133). The premise of the NEP was vested in the idea that a redistribution of capital-ownership would consequently reduce inter- and intra-ethnic tensions. Its aim therefore was to perform an ethnic balancing act as a counter-response to the 1969 riots and to provide ‘the socio-economic conditions for achieving “national unity”’ (Jomo 1990: 5). And alongside this, a more subtle change took place as the official emphasis now ‘made it seditious to question the citizenship rights of non-Malays’ (Tan 1990: 35). In 1990, the National Development Plan replaced the NEP. While there were no significant changes, a strategic shift towards privatization that ‘would be directed toward the Malay community and especially those with close connections with UMNO’ and a ‘greater emphasis on redistributive goals’ can be discerned (Ganguly 1997: 257). Therefore, Wendy Mee argues persuasively that underlying the corporatist model of inventing national identity, where unity is defined in relation to capital accumulation, is another narrative that is more adaptive and ‘is not dependent on cultural homogeneity’ (1998: 229). And this is the discourse of multiculturalism, one that is ‘based on the institutionalization of at least three ethnically “absolutist” divisions and developed in response to a system of British colonial rule and racial classification’ (ibid.: 229). A de-emphasis on Malay nationalism and an emphasis on multiculturalism was necessitated because participation in the processes of 90 V. Devadas globalization demanded a reshaping of Malaysian national consciousness to a more open and proactive sense of nationalism that embraced international capital. Such a possibility was found in what Khoo (1999: 139) calls ‘the notion of trans-ethnic corporatism,’ which I read as part and parcel of the discourse of multiculturalism. Like multiculturalism, ‘trans-ethnic corporatism’ acknowledges differences; like multiculturalism it acknowledges progress; and, like multiculturalism, it supposedly ‘transcends communal boundaries’ (ibid.: 139). It is at this point in the Malaysian national narrative that a more incorporative model that allows space for cultural differences to exist is most noticeable. This is precisely what motivates Khoo to write that Malaysia’s present approach to nation building and nationalism has been reconstituted ‘as a celebration of plurality’ (ibid.: 147). And refuge was found in the discourse of multiculturalism, which opened the possibility for the ‘packag[ing] of relations: ethnic relations, policy processes and economic transformation’ (ibid.: 149). To recapitulate through Ganguly:

the … Malaysian case … underscore[s] the … importance of promoting economic growth in conjunction with [a] measure of redistributive justice. … The ability of [the] government … to promote rapid economic growth while providing economic security to all politically salient ethnic communities may well be the key to preventing a resurgence in ethnic conflict. (Ganguly 1997: 272)

In other words, the project of nation-building, national identity and the fashioning of a sense of nationalism are embedded within a politics of material interests. The official emphasis on multiculturalism was most recently announced at the 2007 golden anniversary of Merdeka (Independence) and globally promoted through the ‘Visit Malaysia Year 2007’ advertisement, which showcased the multicultural make-up and practices of the citizenry. The sloganising of the multicultural nation in 2007 comes off the back of an earlier, globally promoted, slogan – ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’ – which also emphasised the multiculturalism of the nation and its people. This emphasis on multiculturalism is strategic in that:

the ideal form of ideology of … global capitalism is multiculturalism, the attitude which, from a kind of empty global position treats each local culture the way the colonizer treats the colonized people – as ‘natives’ whose mores are to be carefully studied and ‘respected’. (Žižek 1997: 44)

Thus, it can be said that an emphasis on multiculturalism subsumes the volatility of ‘critical difference’ by taxonomising differences under a more manageable ethnic categorization. Through Žižek, again, we return to what is a central criticism against multiculturalism: ‘the question of homogenization and that refusal of specificity’ (Spivak and Gunew 1993: 200). In Žižek we find a collapse of the specific into the universal language of transnational capitalism while others (Bhabha, Balibar, and Gunew) argue that the specificities of cultural identity are collapsed into the Makkal Sakthi 91 national myth of the universal. Taking on Žižek’s argument elucidates how multiculturalism is functional to the idea of progress in the context of Malaysia where the hegemony of the economic discourse is central to the nation-building project. To recollect Hobsbawm’s point, ‘the champions of the “nation-state” assumed not only that it must be national, but also that it must be “progressive”’ (Hobsbawm 1975: 86). And multiculturalism fosters the national ‘search … for a regeneration of the national culture, adapted to the requirements of progress, but retaining at the same time its distinctiveness’ (Chatterjee 1986: 2). Alongside the multicultural agenda, which governs cultural politics in the nation, there has also been an emphasis on the privileging of the bumiputeras as part of the strategy of managing diversity in the nation. This has been historically in place, as I have traced earlier, and was later modified by Mahathir and the BN who:

launched an Islamisation campaign on its own terms … On the ideological front, the government pledged the promotion of a ‘modernist’ Islam as the guiding principle of governance and material advancement. Against the backdrop of reduced emphasis on Malay-centric bumiputeraism, universalistic Islam assumed a more prominent place in the building of a new national vision – of a globally-oriented, modern and united Malaysia. (Hamayotsu 2004: 229)

The relaunching of the project of Islamization fits well with the discourse of global capitalism and the national project of modernization that the state has invested in because it links Islamization with economic advancement, while at the same time ensuring that the majority ethnic Malay population on whose back the BN has been in power, is also appeased. The rhetoric of modernization was only that: rhetoric. This is because in reality, bumiputeraism, as a form of ‘pastoral power that has been employed on behalf of the Malay’, ‘has unevenly favored the middle and upper classes, and Malays as a community enjoy more rights, benefits, and claims than non-Malays’ (Ong 2006: 80). This practice of ethno-communal privileging continued unabated while the modernization rhetoric was championed. The crucial move, on the part of the BN and Mahathir, was the rearticulation of Islam within the trajectories of global capital. As Mahathir himself spells out, ‘there is no reason why the Islamic faith, properly interpreted, cannot achieve spiritual well-being as well as material success for the Malays’ (cited in Ong 2006: 81). Religion, or more precisely the solidarity and sense of belonging cultivated through religious affiliation, is recast not only as compatible with the working of global capital, but also as sharing the very same principles that underpin global capitalism. To quote Ong again, ‘Islam … [is] used to turn Malaysia into a “model state” … a moderate and reasonable Islam [which] helps to strengthen the state by working and meshing smoothly with global capitalism’ (2006: 81). And because the project of Islamization is now connected with the workings of global capital, as is multiculturalism, the two approaches to state management of cultural diversity are not seen as mutually exclusive. Rather, Islamization and multiculturalism, I wish to suggest, are mutually inclusive 92 V. Devadas approaches insofar as they are concerned with ensuring the economic advancement of bangsa Malaysia. They are, more precisely, to use Ong’s formulation, strategies that have been employed by the postcolonial Malaysian nation-state to fragment the biopolitical field that is the national population (constituted as citizens of Malaysia) into pre-constituted ethnic categories in the name of neoliberalism ‘as a technology of government … a profoundly active way of rationalizing governing and self-governing in order to optimize’ (ibid.: 3): optimize productivity, efficiency, cultural relationships, state power, and so on through a ‘flexible management of sovereignty … [that] adjust political spaces [and also cultural, ethnic, and racial tropes] to the dictates of global capital, giving corporations indirect power over the political conditions of citizens in zones that are differently articulated to global production and financial circuits’ (ibid.: 78). Such flexibility, seen very clearly in the simultaneous use of multiculturalism and a privileging of the ethno- communalism of the dominant population, must therefore be seen as discourses that are connected and are foundational to ‘neoliberalism as a political rationality’ (ibid.: 14). Multiculturalism and ethno-communal privileging are the very ‘cal- culative choices and techniques in the domains of citizenship and of governing’ upon which ‘neoliberalism as a technology of governing relies’ (ibid.: 4). Taken up in this way, the management of cultural diversity through multiculturalism and ethno-communal privileging as the social contract of Malaysia must be conceived as part of a complex system of calculation that foregrounds neoliberalism as a technology of government. The balancing act between multiculturalism and bumiputeraism, as two systems of calculation that the state employs to deal with cultural diversity, as two regimens of structuring the biopolitical field that is the population, has in recent years shifted towards the latter. Put simply, there has been a gradual shift in the secular government’s position vis-à-vis the strong Islamic roots of the majority of its citizens, encroaching on the lives of its citizens, and fuelling religious tensions as seen in a number of cases that have emerged over the burial of Hindus in ac- cordance with Islamic rites. The best-known case is that of the national mountain climber M. Moorthy, who despite testimony from his family that he was a practising Hindu, was allowed by the Shariah courts to be buried according to Islamic rites in 2005. In 2007, Revathi Massosai was ordered to spend six months in an Islamic rehabilitation centre for the purposes of ‘re-embracing’ her Islamic faith as she had married Suresh Veerappan, a Hindu, who had not converted to Islam. This was deemed unconstitutional as Malaysian law does not recognize marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim, unless the non-Muslim accepts Islam. The state also took custody of their daughter, who was given to Massosai’s Muslim parents. In late 2007, a Hindu mother, Subashini Rajasingam, lost an appeal to prevent her husband, a recent Muslim convert, from changing their 4-year-old son’s religion to Islam. The highest court in Malaysia affirmed the ruling of a lower federal court, which granted the Muslim husband the right to use the sharia courts to seek a divorce, and also upheld his right to convert their child to Islam without the mother’s consent. To add to the judicial onslaughts, in 2006, seventy-six Hindu temples were demolished or forcibly relocated by the Malaysian government. Makkal Sakthi 93 Many of these temples have existed on plantations since British colonial rule, yet the government refused members of the Hindu community the right to register the temple. The most prominent case is that of the destruction of the 100-year-old Sri Muthu Mariamman temple, which was located on a rubber plantation that was home to approximately one thousand families. When the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia made claims on the temple’s land, the court cleared it for demolition despite protests by the Hindu community. It is against such a backdrop of state racism and the failure of both multiculturalism and bumiputeraism as state policies, the dominance of ‘neoliberalism as a political technology’ (Ong 2006: 14), that the Hindraf movement emerged.

Blog responses to the Hindraf effect: the border politics of Malaysian multiculturalism How has an ethnically diverse citizenry negotiated the Hindraf effect in the blog- osphere? How might we conceptualise their responses? What kinds of tensions, conflicts, and productive dialogue are taking place? And most crucially, what do these responses tell us about race and postcolonial democracy in Malaysia?1 The first set of responses or trajectory identifiable is one that is built along racial, ethnic, and cultural lines. Here, the discourse of migrant rights, racial discrimination, Indian solidarity, bumiputera rights, and citizenship – or more precisely, the differentiation of citizenry – take hold and are articulated through specific regimes of inclusion and exclusion. So for instance we hear Vickneswaran, a member of the younger generation Indian community who was detained at a rally in January lament that ‘we [the Indian community] have no future in this country, we are “anak tiri” (stepsons) of this soil!’ (cited in B. Mahendran 2008). The use of ‘anak tiri’ is powerful because on the one hand, it returns to the foundational narrative of belonging, community and citizenship and claims that the Indian community, unlike the dominant Malay community, has no claims to belonging to Malaysia. It is also a critique of the principle of bumiputeraism, which is used by the state to legitimise the privileging and affirming of the first-status of the Malay population. In short, for Vickneswaran, the cause that Hindraf represents is a critique of the foundational principle upon which the nation and national identity are constituted. Sharing a similar sentiment, about Hindraf and the nation, is Perazhagan (2007) who writes:

They [the H5] have done it – for us, for the Hindus – for the Indians at large. It is now our paramount duty to stand behind them and support them – the Barisan will never help the Indians – MIC, PPP, IPF or even the new UIP, all the parties are for themselves only, they cannot and will not fight for our rights. The MIC, PPP and the IPF had been long in the Barisan, what could they do – did they stop any of our temples been broken down? No. Let us take a vow – Not even a single vote for Barisan in the next elections.

Like Vickneswaran, Perazhagan’s lament is about the differential status of 94 V. Devadas citizenship, but unlike Vickneswaran’s, Perazhagan’s post is much more direct, addressing the larger Hindu Indian population and it calls for political action, for the use of the electoral system to boycott the ruling coalition which, it is claimed, ‘had never helped the Indian community’. The directedness of such a posting is not an exception: rather, it predominates the postings hosted through the Hindraf website. Numerous postings which call for direct political interventions do so with specific reference to state measures such as the demolition of temples; the lack of proper educational resources and infrastructure for a Tamil school in Taiping; the absence of places ‘of importance to Indian Malaysians’ in the Shah Alam City Council (MBSA) street directory; the decision by the Immigration Department to cease issuing work permits to new applications for foreign priests, temple musicians and sculptors, and an extensive list of 55 claims of racial discrimination (Madhavan 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). This includes claims that:

99% of Petronas directors are Malays, 3% of Petronas employees are Chinese, 99% of 2000 Petronas gasoline stations are owned by Malays, 100% of all contractors working under Petronas projects must be of Bumis status, 0% of non-Malay staff are legally required in Malay companies, but there must be 30% Malay staff in Chinese companies, 5% of all new intake for government police, nurses, army, are non-Malays … and 95% of government contracts are given to Malays. (Shawnmorgan 2008)

The provision of such statements and claims against the state generally, and against its policy of bumiputeraism more specifically, can be grasped as a subaltern imperative in that what the posts are doing is providing a different account of the nation by returning to specific instances where racial discrimination takes place. In that sense the blogposts collectively are, to use Gyan Prakash’s words, ‘examining … the gap between institutional structures of representations and the claim that these structures and institutions represent the culture and politics of the masses’ (1994: 1476). Here the critique is premised on shoring up the gap between the institutional claim to democracy and equality to all citizens by the state and the corresponding racism that accompanies the state’s project of nation building. How do we conceptualize these comments which return to specific moments in Malaysian history to show how particular events, histories, and regimes of representation are subordinated to the ethno-communal nationalist project? How do we conceptualize a solidarity formed around a writing of the nation’s history through the lens of racial exploitation and discrimination? On the one hand, this communal solidarity built around the racial discrimination faced by the Indian community can be grasped as a politics of horizontal affiliation (Chakrabarty 2002: 16), though the solidarity is not merely built upon class consciousness, but also organized around clearly demarcated racial and cultural lines. Unlike a politics of vertical mobilization, which is a characteristic of elite politics that involved the affiliation of people according to established, state-sanctioned Makkal Sakthi 95 parliamentary institutions, legal and constitutional and social structures, a politics of horizontal mobilization forms solidarities that are not part of the state apparatus. On the other hand, in as much as the blogposts can be read as an intervention into the history of cultural and racial relationships in Malaysia, they are also framed and underpinned by what we might call a politics of border construction. That is to say, as much as the solidarity is interventionist, committed to a project of opening up the national history and challenging state discrimination, it nevertheless is built upon a politics of closure in that the solidarity is based on clearly demarcated racial, ethnic, and cultural lines. In other words, the Hindraf effect is grasped as a response from a specific community built around the migrant narrative. The paradox here is this: against the very border-crossing exercise that the blogposts seem to be committed to, to end racial discrimination and hence traverse the migrant/ bumiputera distinction, it nevertheless works from and is informed by a politics of closure which returns to racial and cultural specificity as the terrain for forging a solidarity. In addition to such postings which turn inward to foster a solidarity premised on racial and cultural belonging through a critique of state racism by writing another history of the nation, there are others that turn to religion, or religious difference as the template for solidarity. For instance, Perazhagan (2008) posted a list of ten com- mandments under the heading, ‘The duty of every Hindu (Indian)’, which includes ‘contribut[ing] (at least) RM 1 to the families of the 5 heroes’, ‘organising prayer ceremonies in each district/state (at least) once a month’, ‘ensuring you inform at least one person NOT to vote for Barisan in the next elections’. The turn to religious differences is also echoed in ArulSelvanBose’s (2008) post titled, ‘Makkal Sakthi Pirrantanai’ (People’s Power is Born) which publicizes the gathering that had been organized to celebrate the coming of Hindraf at the Arulmigu Sri Maha Mariamman Temple with the following comments in Tamil: ‘After Our Brave Heroes and Martyrs are released we will have a big special prayers. We will give hands and our voice to our relatives to voice out our rights. Sea waves come in, together we stand. Goodness surrounds you. … Long live people’s power.’ The choice of the temple as the site for marking the birth of the political intervention and alliance, and the ritualization of the birth of the political movement which replays the Hindu practice of celebrating the birth of child at the temple in front of the goddess Mariamman is a striking reminder of the way in which a political imperative is circumscribed in terms of a religious discourse. Sactyr (2008), another blogger, has two videos uploaded on her/his blog screening the Hindraf Candle Vigil in Penang during the Thaipusam religious festival celebrations. Similar such variations of blogs circulate that draw upon Hindu religious practices to frame the Hindraf movement and which employ the ritual of prayer to politicize support for the movement as a galvanizing force to consolidate its solidarity. Very much like the project of turning inward based on racial and cultural differences, the use of Hinduism (its customs, practices and so on) to form a political solidarity is a move that turns inwards and builds solidarities that are closed. The politicization through religion, or more precisely through the production of a religio-political relationship must also be seen as part an increasing emphasis 96 V. Devadas of ‘religious beliefs, practices and identities in times significantly shaped by the forces of (economic) globalization’ (Karner and Aldridge 2004: 6). Karner and Aldridge argue that the conditions of late capitalism have produced a new form of social polarization separating a global business elite, comprising ‘frequent-flier executives, financiers, bureaucrats, professionals and media moguls’ who control the nodes of the network society, from the many localities where job insecurity and existential uncertainty turn into chronic anxiety (ibid.: 11). The condition of chronic anxiety, produced by the unequal ebbs and flows of globalization, they continue, returns us ‘to a founding theme in the sociology of religion. However, the explanatory direction of the Weberian paradigm is now inverted: ‘In place of the economic consequences of doctrinally induced “salvation anxiety” during early capitalism, we are now confronted with economically induced “survival anxiety,” for which religions appear capable of offering some form of antidote’ (ibid.; emphasis in original). Through an empirical survey of religious revivalism since the 1970s, at the time of the rise of the network society, the authors found ‘a global “desecularization of the world,” an increase in antisecular movements and discourses disenchanted with the project of modernity and insistent on the political potential and public role of religious beliefs and practices’ (ibid.: 11–12). The conclusion that the authors arrive at provides a useful entry into conceptual- ising the blogposts that return to the terrain of religion as an antidote to a survival anxiety produced by the conditions of global capital. After all, one of the key critiques launched by Hindraf upon the coalition government is the lack of access to the flows of capital within the country, the lack of employment opportunities, and the lack of industrial development in areas with a high Indian population. The anxieties of survival produced by the inequitability of global capital generally, and the inequitability of distribution of capital within the nation-state, more specifically, has engendered a turn to religion as a means of dealing with the anxiety which at the same time produces a sense of solidarity mobilized around religious belonging. Similar to the responses supporting the Hindraf effect, the counter-responses have also been staged in these closed forms: based on religious belonging and racial right. In other words, the counter-responses to the Hindraf movement have also turned to racial and religious specificity as forms of authority and as an antidote to the Hindraf effect, itself an antidote to survival anxiety. The blog entry titled ‘Hindraf: Darah, Tanah, Akidah (Hindraf: Blood, Soil, Faith) by Raudhah Kholidah (2007), who identifies herself as an educated middle- class Muslim woman – she is finishing up her PhD in Biology – and whose entries are in both English and Bahasa Malaysia, deserves particular attention as it is much more ambiguously posited, but then returns to affirm the immutability and incontestability of the law of Islam. Kholidah begins by contextualizing the Hindraf effect and says that she is concerned about the solution and goes on to outline three headings – Ikatan Darah (Blood Ties), Ikatan Tanah (Ties to the Soil/Land) and Ikatan Akidah (Ties to Faith) – and under each provides a commentary. So, under Ikatan Darah she writes Makkal Sakthi 97 She is born to be Malay, He is Indian, They are Chinese but they never choose themselves to be what they are, were they? If the law states that the privileges are for the Bumi’s only, would it be fair to those non-bumi? They don’t choose themselves to be non-bumi, isn’t it?

Under Ikatan Tanah Kholidah, she remarks

Where we born, what is our nationality, where is our origin. It is all about fate. No single person got to choose where they want to be born, their nation nor their origin. So, is it fair for the law to give the privileges … to the people based on those characteristics? This kind of man-made law contains many flaws … creating misunderstandings [and] disagreements … To me, the only best solution is by following Allah’s law. He has created us all and He knows what’s best for us.

This is the point at which the robust critique of a politics of descent makes a complete turn and finds recourse in the authority of religion, in this case Islam. For Kholidah this does not seem like a contradiction because for her Islam is about peace and love. This is what she writes under the third heading ‘Ikatan Akidah’. While I do not wish to contest Kholidah’s conception of Islam, her framing works powerfully to vacuum politics out of the scene of the struggle. In other words, it depoliticizes the event by reframing Islam without mention of the very encroachment of Shariah laws upon the non-bumiputera citizenry, which has been one of the reasons for the Hindraf solidarity. Kholidah’s depoliticization works in the same way that Islam was repackaged by the Mahathir regime in its institutionalization of the modernization project. Without the ambiguity that frames Kholidah’s response, others such as the following blogposts by unidentified writers comment more directly on the event. One entry in Malay titled ‘Orang India Jangan Lupa Diri’ (Indian People Don’t Forget Yourselves) says

Kalau buruk sangat Negara ini, siapa yang nak balik tempat asal mereka di India. Kami boleh siapkan kapal dan juga boleh sediakan kapal terbang, tapi ini semua terpulang kepada kaum India sendiri.

If this country is bad, who amongst you wishes to go home to their original homes in India. We can prepare a ship or even an aeroplane, but this is all up to the Indian community themselves. (Anonymous 2007)

Another posts the following, ‘Tak Sedar Dia Untung’, which is a very short but powerful comment which translates into ‘They [the reference is to the Indian community] Don’t Realize How Lucky They Are’ (Long Kang 2007). Another, Bapak Kau (‘Your Father’; 2007), comments in Malay 98 V. Devadas Senang cerita keling pikul barang2 balik negara india … tak sedar yang koran (keeling) tinggal kat tanah melayu.

Its quite easy to tell stories about Indians [the term ‘keling’ is a derogatory form of identifying the Indian community] taking their things and going back to India … Don’t realize that you (keling) live in Malay land.

Similarly, Yuuush (2008) says, ‘Damn to all HIINDRAF members. Your nation should be INDIA not Malaysia. If u are disagree with the policies, go back to INDIA. Do you think u can get the same benefits today in Malaysia.’ Similar variations of such comments circulate, which return to the foundations of the nation, constructed through the prism of bumiputeraism, as legitimate grounds for critiquing the claims of the Indian citizenry. Put another way, the critique of Hindraf on grounds that this is bumiputera land, which has been a gracious host to the Indian migrant community, calls into question the Indian community’s belonging and right to the nation while reaffirming the ethno-communal privilege of the Malay population. These postings, which mobilize a racialized discourse to critique the Hindraf effect, work along the same vein as the pro-Hindraf responses that turned to a divisional politics of solidarity built upon racial, cultural and religious terrains. The criticisms of Hindraf cited also operate along the same logic: it turns to religious, racial, and cultural terrains to substantiate the differential status of citizenship of the Indian population. The antidote is the same in both cases.

Border-crossings: beyond religious belonging and racial right Alongside these kinds of bordered politics that are affirmative and critical of the Hindraf effect, there are numerous postings that respond in ways that dismantle the racial and religious borders that animate the earlier postings. In other words, these responses are committed to negotiating the Hindraf effect by fostering a shared commitment to rethinking postcolonial democracy in Malaysia that cuts across the aforementioned categories and includes a multitude of people from different racial and ethnic communities. The commitment here is to a border-crossing politics, one that disengages from negotiating the Hindraf effect simply as symptomatic of the concerns of the Indian community to one that is a reflection of the undemocratic operations of postcolonial state power in Malaysia. Syaza Ismail, an 18 year old who declares herself as a Muslim and has a photograph of herself in a tudung (headscarf), has a posting of another blog, that of Nathaniel Tan (2007), a Malaysian-Chinese, that responds to the detention of the five Hindraf leaders under the ISA as reported in the Malaysian newspaper The Star

I don’t care what you think they’re guilty of. Every Malaysian, and every human being deserves their day in court. If you cannot charge them and produce evidence to prosecute them, just keep your hands off. If they are guilty, prove it in a clean court of law, and give them whatever punishment is due. But this Makkal Sakthi 99 is kidnapping, and this is tyranny. Don’t fall for this safeguarding national security bullshit. Not a shred of proof has been produced to demonstrate violent intent. Until there is such proof, these actions are unwarranted. ISA and Hindraf are two separate things. We can debate Hindraf, as there is indeed a lot to debate, but the ISA must be opposed on principle, at all times – without regard to politics. … What are you going to do about it?

Ismail (2008), responded to Tan’s post, writing in her blog

As a muslim, i quite fear all this Hindraf stuff and so on … but i would like to ask you, is it wise to imprisoned the Hindraf 5? Press, detainees, are hop- ing for the release of them. There’s no proof saying that they were guilty. Hindraf 5 may seemed like putting more fear in the heart of the government but imprisoned those who are failed to be proven guilty deliberately show the weakness of Malaysia’s Internal Security Act (ISA). I’m not trying to do any politics here … In fact, i hate politics. Think about this. Integration really matters in maintaining a country.

The simultaneous declaration of herself as Muslim and the crossing of the racialized view of the event, opens up a new form of connection, a solidarity that disregards racial and religious differences in the name of equitable and democratic judicial-legal proceedings which do not impinge on human rights. Without actually calling it so, Tan and Ismail are saying the same thing that Giorgio Agamben does where he traces the concept of state of exception and its relationship to sovereignty and argues that the state of exception is ‘the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics’ (2005: 2). Drawing on the immediacy of the global war on terror, Agamben argues that ‘the transformation of a provisional and exceptional measure [the creation of a state of emergency or exception] into a technique of government threatens to alter the traditional distinction between constitutional forms [democracy and absolutism]’ (ibid.). Here, Tan and Ismail are pointing to the very use of exceptional measures – the ISA – to police citizens without regard for proper judicial-legal operations in the name of national security to shore up the absolutism of the postcolonial democratic nation. Such a view of the event, I would like to suggest, is creating a cross-border political alliance or solidarity formed across various divides. Rather than casting the Hindraf effect as a specific racial or religious concern, they recast the debate in terms of the rights of the citizens. Such a recasting of the issue is poignant not only because it crosses the thresholds of race, culture and religion; more crucially the recasting positions the concerns of Hindraf as a concern for all citizens, and opens an invitation to participate in the question of democracy in a postcolonial nation. A similar critique of the event is put forward by Turun Padang (2007). Writing in Malay, Padang points out that the other blog entries that s/he has read, are concerned with the effect of the Hindraf solidarity rather than the cause. Such misplaced emphasis, s/he goes on to say, masks the causes that have given rise 100 V. Devadas to such discontent and fails to recognize that the population is being deceived by UMNO, MCA and MIC and their respective cronies. Given this, Padang suggests that the Hindraf concern be conceived as symptomatic of a larger cause produced by the ruling coalition and calls for the citizenry to conceptualize themselves as a single unit by returning to the concept of Rukun Negara (National Principles) as means of consolidating the heterogeneous population as one, against state produced inequalities. Rukun Negara, as a national ideology, was first mooted by the state as a reaction to the racial riots of May 1969 to foster national unity. While the championing of Rukun Negara by Padang does return to a state policy that I have argued masks the racism of the state, Padang’s mobilization nevertheless does work to remind the citizenry and the state apparatus that the possibility of forging a national community beyond race and culture is still (im)possible. Like Tan, Ismail, and Padang, Mani Thamilkko (2008) who identifies himself as ‘a middle-class educated Indian who is not a practicing Hindu’ posts a blog on the Hindraf website titled ‘An Indian Problem is a Malaysian Problem’ in which he appeals to his fellow citizens to care about the issues confronting the Indian community precisely because they are not Indian-specific issues, but rather a national concern: ‘Every segment of the Malaysian community has been marginalized, polarized, discriminated against in some way,’ Thamilkko reminds, and calls for a refusal to engage with the Hindraf effect in racialized terms and prefers instead to cast it as a national problem, thus implicating the wider citizenry to transcend racial and religious difference in the name of a unified national identity. It is in the spirit of cutting across such divisive categories that Dr Kumar Devaraj (2007), in a contribution titled ‘The Hindraf Campaign: A Critique’, draws attention to the limits of the campaign itself on the grounds that Hindraf has turned to ethnic mobilization as grounds to challenge racial discrimination. Such a strategy, Devaraj argues, is ineffective because, first, it replays the very techniques of governance that the ruling coalition has employed: the use of racial politics as a means of governance. Second, the concerns raised by Hindraf are not ethnic-specific in that

apart from racial discrimination, the majority of Indians face economic discrimination because they are workers in a system that favours the businessmen and the capitalists. About 70% of Malaysian Indians are workers. The problem they face as workers include: low wages. In many factories the basic pay in RM 18 per day, which works out to RM 468 per month. There is no job security. Outsourcing, the widespread use of contract workers, and the easy availability of migrant workers all weaken the bargaining position of Malaysian labour … The problems listed above are also experienced by workers of all races in Malaysia – even the Malays, who are the beneficiaries of the Bumiputra policies. Only about 20% of Malay workers have jobs in government. The remainder have to work in the private sector where they too experience economic discrimination as workers in a capitalist economy. Malays workers are not exempted from the problems of low wages, job insecurity, rising costs of basic services, etc. Makkal Sakthi 101 This is a pungent critique of the foundations of the Hindraf movement, and also an astute reminder that the policy of bumiputeraism is tinged by class differences. Not all Malays, as the author points out, enjoy the benefits of ethno-communal privileging. For the author, it should be class discrimination that should be used as the galvanizing force for the solidarity that is makkal sakthi rather than ethnicity: the former opens the possibility of forming a cross-cultural, cross-ethnic solidarity that is critical of the neoliberal principles that are foundational to the postcolonial nation’s governance of the population. A final blog posting I would like to refer to is the one by Al-Banjari (2008) titled ‘Aku Bukan Anti Melayu’ [‘I am Not Anti-Malay’]. A self-declared ‘Blogger Bebas’ [‘Free Blogger’] who unequivocally supports the causes of the Pan- Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), Al-Banjari, writing in Malay criticizes the bumiputera policy that underpins Malaysian democracy by returning to a key speech delivered by Tunku Abdul Rahman – Malaysia’s first Prime Minister – that announced that Malaysia belongs to the three races, to remind that the concept of Malay Land is no longer relevant. Qualifying that although he is of Malay descent, he wishes to ask to what extent we must allow those that claim bumiputera status to keep on dreaming with yellow umbrellas. The use of the term ‘yellow umbrella’ is loaded in that the reference brings to mind the third line of the national flag anthem introduced in 2000 – Kuning berdaulat payung Negara [‘Sovereign yellow, the country’s protector’] – to criticize the protectionism of bumiputra rights under the name of a sovereign nation. The blog entry continues with a lengthy criticism of current practices by the ruling coalition, specifically the politicization of religion by the government, and ends by returning to the Quran, citing Ayat 13 Surah Al- Hujaraat [Verse 13, Place of Revelations], which condemns racial differentiation and calls on the people to live together harmoniously beside Allah. This turn to the Quran to make the point about racial and cultural tolerance is interesting because the turn firstly negates the possibility that the blogger is anti- Malay or anti-Muslim (even though the title tells us that he is not); second, the turn to the foundational law of Islam and the authority of the Book appeals to the dominant bumiputera population to rethink their claims which are premised on the Book as well, particularly the hegemony of Islam. Al-Banjari’s turn to the Book is quite unlike Kholidah’s in that Al-Banjari does not employ Islam, the Quran, to construct borders: for Kholidah the solution to the conflict is through adherence to the Quran and Allah. Such a solution is both unethical and impractical for it is premised on flattening out religious, racial and cultural differences to the authority of Allah. To be part of the solution proposed by Kholidah demands the construction of a border that demarcates between those who embrace Islam and are thus part of the solution and those who refuse and who therefore are part of the problem. The immutability of the authority of Islam remains intact. Al-Banjari’s turn to Islam and the authority of the Quran does not operate in the same way because here the Quran is shown to be non-essentialist, fragile. It is not as authoritative because as Ayat 13 from the Surah Al-Hujaraat tells us, Allah condemns racial differentiation. And this contradicts the claims to the Quran as grounds for racial discrimination. What Al-Banjari is doing, thus, is returning to the very source text 102 V. Devadas to shore up, particularly to the bumiputera Muslim community, that the Book also tells us otherwise: that racial differentiation is not religiously condoned. Unlike Kholidah, Al-Banjari turns to the Quran to attempt to persuade and convince those who respond to the Hindraf effect in religiously unfettered and racially divided ways to dismantle the very barriers to productive dialogue. For him, the solution lies in a border-crossing politics. The postings that I have discussed here affirm and criticize the Hindraf effect through a commitment to forming a solidarity that extends beyond the borders of race and religion, and which is committed to rethinking postcolonial democracy in Malaysia. Ethnic mobilization for them is not the answer to state discrimination.

Conclusion In examining the various blog posting in relation to the emergence of Hindraf in Malaysia, I have sought to explore how the multicultural citizenry responded to the claims of a migrant Hindu Indian community. And as my discussion has shown, the responses from a multiplicity of people from different races and religious inclina- tions has been varied, but can be framed within two broad trajectories: responses that are premised on border production and those that are premised upon border crossings. The latter trajectory, the voices of those from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who reject communalism for a more universalist identification can be seen as part of a larger cosmopolitan solidarity within the space of the nation. This is a solidarity that cuts across the categories of race, ethnicity and culture and includes a multitude of people from different racial and ethnic communities, fostered by a shared commitment to rethinking postcolonial democracy in Malaysia. What is going on here is a complex contest between racialized and non-racialized expressions that simultaneously closes down productive dialogue and opens up cross-cultural encounters, dialogues, contests and solidarities consolidated around a critique of postcolonial democracy in Malaysia. The upshot of this specific example is that the notion of sovereignty, which is under question and struggle, is quite different from the imperial sovereignty that has been declared as animating the global present (Hardt and Negri 2000). In other words, the Hindraf effect, the ambiguous and ambivalent expressions that circulate in the digital sphere, testifies to the point that the sovereignty of the global present is much more complex: the coming of a new politics, built around the idea of the multitude, of networks, alliances and solidarities that transcend specific divides, while possible and potentially much more robust, still remains entangled in a racialized notion of solidarity. The responses from those who reject communalism in favour of a sense of cosmopolitanism, an unracialized identification, provide the grounds for rethinking the way cultural and racial differences are managed in postcolonial Malaysia.

Note 1 For the purposes of this inquiry, theoretical sampling was employed, following Altheide (1996) in which a selection of a number of exemplary cases is used to examine and Makkal Sakthi 103 understand a specific phenomenon. The blogs that I discuss were initially located using the search engine Google to locate blogs that were focusing on the Hindraf movement or at least devoting a portion of their content to talking about it by using search terms ‘blog’ and ‘Hindraf’, and ‘makkal sakthi’. In addition to this, I also searched through Google Blog Search, Google’s search technology focusing on blogs which provides a catalogue of blogs that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom). Further to this, I also sourced blogs hosted on Hindraf’s website www.hindraf.org. Altogether I explored and read through more than 80 blogs, but have only selected 20 for close analysis. This number allowed for the inclusion of several examples of different kinds of blog (individual blogs started by non-journalists; group blogs; political party/personality blogs; blogs started by professional journalists not associated with any news organizations; and those hosted by mainstream and alternative media organizations) in different languages (mainly English, Bahasa Malaysia, Malaysia’s national language, and Tamil). The bloggers included graduate students, politicians, former journalists, and activists, across the spectrum of the multicultural citizenry in the nation.

Weblogs cited Al-Banjari, 31 March 2008, ‘Aku Bukan Anti Melayu’, http://politikbanjar.blogspot. com/2008/03/aku-bukan-anti-melayu.html Anonymous, 5 December 2007, ‘Orang India Jangan Lupa Diri’, http://hindraf.wordpress. com/2007/12/05/orang-india-jangan-lupa-diri/ ArulSelvanBose, 20 January 2008, ‘Makkal Sakthi Piraartanai’ (‘People’s Power is Born’), http://www.hindraf.org/content/makkal-sakthi-piraartanai B Mahendran, 8 March 2008, ‘The rise of “makkal sakthi” (People’s power) in Malaysia’, http://malayindians.blogspot.com/2008/03/rise-of-makkal-sakthi-peoples-power-in.html Bapak Kau, 4 December 2007, untitled, http://www.topix.com/world/malaysia/2007/12/ hindraf-demands-too-extreme-says-pas#comments Kumar Devaraj, 25 November 2007, ‘The Hindraf Campaign: A Critique’, http://www. parti-sosialis.org/?p=31 Long Kang, 4 December 2007, ‘Tak Sedar Dia Untung’, http://www.topix.com/world/ malaysia/2007/12/hindraf-demands-too-extreme-says-pas#comments Madhavan, 2 January 2008 (2008a), ‘“Indian” places missing in Shah Alam guide’, http:// www.hindraf.org/content/indian-places-missing-shah-alam-guide Madhavan, 4 January 2008 (2008b), ‘Shocking news about Tamil schools (not really shocking as we already know the story long time)’ http://www.hindraf.org/content/ shocking-news-about-tamil-schools-not-really-shocking-we-already-know-story-long- time Madhavan, 8 January 2008 (2008c), ‘No more work permit renewal for religious workers’, http://www.hindraf.org/content/no-more-work-permit-renewal-religious-workers Mani Thamilkko, 3 January 2008, ‘An Indian Problem is a Malaysian Problem’, http://www. hindraf.org/content/indian-problem-malaysian-problem Nathaniel Tan, 13 December 2007, ‘ISA used against Hindraf 5 – Justice Under Siege’ http://jelas.info/2007/12/13/isa-used-against-hindraf-5/ Perazhagan, 13 January 2008, ‘The duty of every Hindu (Indian)’, http://www.hindraf.org/ content/duty-every-hindu-indian Perazhagan, 3 December 2007, ‘A Fire Has Been Lit, Let’s All Keep It Burning’, http:// www.hindraf.org/content/fire-has-been-lit-lets-all-keep-it-burning Raudhah Kholidah, 30 November 2007, ‘Hindraf: Darah, Tanah dan Akidah’, http://raud- hahkholidah.blogspot.com/2007/11/hindraf-darah-tanah-dan-akidah.html 104 V. Devadas Sactyr, 25 January 2008, ‘Hindraf Candle Vigil in Penang Thaipusam 2008’, http://www. hindraf.org/content/hindraf-candle-vigil-penang-thaipusam-2008 Shawnmorgan, 14 January 2008, ‘Racial Discrimination in Malaysia’, http://www.hindraf. org/content/racial-discrimination-malaysia Syaza Ismail, 22 March 2008, ‘Hindraf 5’, http://jajalove.blogspot.com/2008/03/this-article- was-taken-from-another-web.html Turun Padang, 19 December 2007, untitled, http://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/ de-citizenise-the-hindraf-leaders-as-a-redemption/ Yuuush, 18 February 2008, untitled, http://hindraf.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/ hindrafputhayakumar-is-a-liar/#comment-101 Part II Representing race, performing multiculturalism

6 Reading the films of independent filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad Cosmopolitanism, Sufi Islam and Malay subjectivity1

Gaik Cheng Khoo

In this chapter, I examine why Yasmin Ahmad’s films have become the target of attacks by a Malay cultural elite. During April–May 2006, a series of media attacks occurred in Malaysia, aimed at the works of indie (independent) Malay filmmakers – Amir Muhammad and Yasmin Ahmad – and the kakikino film screening series, culminating in the banning of Amir’s The Last Communist, a film previously approved by the national censors without cuts. These critics assumed a position based on Manichean categories of the Malay self that are antithetical to Yasmin’s outlook which strives for a cosmopolitan Malay subjectivity: one that does not eschew inter-racial affiliations and which advocates a liberal Sufi Muslim perspective to challenge hegemonic Islam in Malaysia. First, Yasmin Ahmad’s films have to be contextualized in two overlapping spheres which are usually regarded as quite separate: mainstream Malay (New Wave) films and the independent film movement. She follows in the path of 1990s Malay New Wave filmmakers to reclaim adat (Malay custom) from Western modernity and an Arabicized Islam (Khoo 2006a) not only by representing couples wrapped only in sarung (a sensual image for the women) but also in her portrayal of a Malay family who is accepting of other cultural influences and practising a liberal form of Islam. Secondly, she is part of the current wave of independent filmmaking which began in 1999–2000 which has opened up a space for alternative representations of racialized characters and for potential public discussion of race and race relations, officially considered a sensitive topic. These filmmakers are independent in the sense that they predominantly make underground, non-commercial low- budget films, use digital video technology, and are self-funded. Style, content and mode of production distinguish their work from the existing mainstream Malay cinema. Many of the young indie filmmakers are Chinese Malaysians, a contrast to mainstream Malay cinema which is dominated by Malays, targets a largely Malay audience with dialogue in Bahasa Malaysia, and where non-Malay characters are seldom portrayed without being stereotyped: the crass profit-driven Chinese businessman or boss, and the Indian comic (Buli 2004). Independent Malaysian films, on the other hand, may be in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, English, Tamil and Malay. Sometimes they are multilingual and multi-ethnic. In that sense, they expose the inherent Malay-centrism in mainstream commercial films. 108 G.C. Khoo Surprisingly though, unlike Yasmin or Amir Muhammad, not many indie filmmakers broach race politics. Instead, indie filmmakers reflect more everyday concerns revolving around subjectivities that are not necessarily racialized. How then should we respond to these films in our reading? To racialize or not to racialize, both reading strategies offer a paradox. To ignore, ‘e-race’ or downplay the ethnic component may mean reverting to a Western liberal universalist discourse that undermines my postcolonial, and perhaps post-national endeavour to define a uniquely localized cultural form. Yet, to only ever read Malaysian films through a racial lens suggests an inability to regard Malaysian subjectivity as a complex whole, an intersection of multiple forms of identity that include class, gender, educational background, age and ideological beliefs. This conundrum is the result of the successful operations of racialization at numerous levels: through ideological and cultural state apparatuses, the media, private sector, and naturalized to the point of banality through everyday practices of racialization. Thus, I propose using cosmopolitanism as a route to understand these films and filmmaking activities in the new millennium since cosmopolitanism, in its focus on human subjectivity, en- compasses ethnicity but not to the exclusion of other categories of identification. Focusing on the controversy surrounding Yasmin Ahmad’s work, I suggest that not only is the indie filmmaker’s cosmopolitanism perceived (mistakenly) as a threat to the survival of the Malay film industry, but that in its blurring of public and private notions of Islamic morality and practice, lies the very undoing of a hegemonic Malay identity that is asserted through the embodiment of clearly visible Muslim markers (Foucault 1979) and fully performative Muslim bodies (Butler 1990) of a kind that has no place for individual interpretation or agency. Such an undoing of hegemonic Malay subjectivity through cosmopolitan references and Sufi Islam bears definitive political salience in a multi-ethnic society like Malaysia. But first, I will provide details about the attacks levelled at the indie film movement before delving into a deeper analysis of Malay subjectivity to reveal why the critics are resistant to cosmopolitan inclusivity. Lastly, I will discuss Yasmin Ahmad’s films in more detail, drawing out the Sufi elements in them.

Elite construction of Malay subjectivity In April 2006, independent filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad’s inter-ethnic films Sepet (2004) and Gubra (2006) were attacked in a weekly television forum Fenomena Seni (Arts Phenomena) on the government-run Radio-Televisyen Malaysia 1. The provocative title of the discussion was ‘Sepet and Gubra: Cultural Corruptors?’ (‘Sepet dan Gubra: Pencemar Budaya?’) Two invited guests, Akmal Abdullah from the Malay-language daily Berita Harian, and Raja Azmi Raja Sulaiman, a film producer and writer for the mainstream Malay cinema, expressed highly critical and conservative views. Raja Azmi stated that Malaysia – ‘the land of the Malays’ – belonged to the Malays (‘Tanah Melayu milik orang Melayu’, Ezlisk 2006). Akmal, the newspaper editor, thought it was impossible for Orked, the heroine of both of Yasmin’s films, with her strong religious background, to fall in love with a ‘Chinese criminal’, the illegal video disc seller Jason, and that Yasmin’s film Sepet The films of Yasmin Ahmad 109 was unrepresentative of the reality of most Malay Muslim lives. Akmal argued that the bilal (muezzin) in Gubra should have reported the two sex workers in his neighbourhood to the religious authorities rather than showing them compassion and understanding. He read the fictional world in Gubra as expressing Yasmin’s ‘fantasies’, which, he said, promoted ‘dangerous’ and ‘manipulative’ values that would ‘confuse the religious and moral sensibilities of its [Malay Muslim] audience’ (Surin 2006). Malay writer Faisal Tehrani took a similar stance in his blog ‘Gubra Yang Sesat Lagi Menyesatkan’ (‘Gubra that is morally lost and corruptive’; Faisal 2006). This illustrates that the discourse of race, especially when it relates to the preservation of Malay ethnicity, is usually accompanied by its imperative twin discourse, the discourse of Islamic morality. Faisal’s blog castigates Yasmin’s representation of Sufi Islam in Gubra as being too liberal to the point of secularism and suggests ways for the film to proselytize Islam. Earlier, Akmal had deployed a similar call to morality with regard to the film screenings by kakikino, a group of academics/cinema enthusiasts from the National University of Malaysia. He wrote in horror that uncensored international films with so-called (porno)graphic scenes (‘babak lucah’) and nudity were allowed to be screened at a public institution, the National Film Development Board (FINAS; Akmal 2006a). In another article which appeared two days later, ‘Epilog: Awasi filem antimoral’ (‘Epilogue: Beware of antimoral films’), he congratulated the Minister of Culture and Heritage for temporarily suspending the film series (Akmal 2006b). Akmal’s congratulatory article betrays a paranoid Manichean construction of a cultural Self, where pure Eastern and Islamic values are pitted against a Westernised Other whose culture constantly threatens the moral boundaries of the Self. The writer warns that under the guise of promoting artistic-quality foreign films, subtle forces are working to promote subversive culture (‘budaya songsang’), elevate pornography and violence, and destroy ‘our pure culture’ (‘budaya murni kita’). He claims that the hidden agenda to obliterate ‘our’ social morals and character is worrying as it seems to advocate becoming more liberal and imitating Western society and other Asian nations which have forgotten the importance of morals, ‘peradaban’ (civility) and character. Nor does rational judgement appear to prevail in his reference to the alleged moral deterioration caused by exposure to art films as a kind of cancer that might work to fulfil ‘the Jewish mission to use Hollywood as a tool to destroy the culture and thought of the world and that of Islam.’ Anti- Semitic statements are not uncommon in Berita Harian. However, what is relevant here is not journalistic ethics but the complex psychology of racialized subjectivity. How does it operate? How do we theorize this irrational concatenation of multiple Others that turn on, generate and activate the Malay self?

Yasmin’s challenge An analysis of Malay Muslim subjectivity at this juncture will explain the rationale of such critics. This subjectivity is constructed through a series of oppositional terms that includes ethnicity, stereotypical ethnic traits, political and religious 110 G.C. Khoo ideologies, and world systems. I move through this series of oppositions in order to explain why there is an obvious shift from a discourse of anti-colonial ethnic Malayness to Muslimness, from ‘race’ to religion; and the effects of this shift on the Malay psyche and more broadly, on a multi-ethnic society. First, ‘[e]thnic ideology is … just as much a question of “who you are not” as “who you are”’ (Nagata 1975: 3). Malayness, in this ideological paradigm, is most clearly defined against Chineseness:

Historically this relationship has been marked by a chronic ambivalence: on the one hand, a grudging respect for Chinese economic prowess; on the other, a rejection of perceived Chinese personal and cultural abrasiveness and all that this implies in moral and religious terms. (Nagata 1997: 99–100)

‘Chinese economic prowess’ comes with a chain of other stereotypical signifiers which resonate with the workings of Western capitalism: being hardworking, urban, modern, successful, wealthy; in other words, to be emulated if the Malays want to be successful. Yet, Yasmin’s films refute this image by centring on working-class Chinese characters who merely get by in their daily lives. The ambivalence towards Chinese Malaysians is reflected in contradictory ethnic stereotypes: on the one hand, the industrious wealthy Chinese businessman; and on the other, the Chinese communist, as marked by the push to ban The Last Communist. The conflation of ‘Chinese’ and ‘komunis’ is a gesture that alienates Chinese Malaysians, a constant reminder that they are the enemy within. A scene in Gubra clearly articulates this alienation when Alan reveals to Orked how it feels to be a Chinese Malaysian by saying, ‘it’s like loving someone who doesn’t love you back.’ The serial attacks on independent Malaysian films articulate collectively a deep psychic (not just economic or political) investment in the operations of racialization and the belief in Malay supremacy (ketuanan Melayu; see Ting, this volume). For Malay ethno-nationalists, this deep psychic investment in ketuanan Melayu cannot be divested since it is integral to the constitution of the Malay Muslim subject as bumiputera (lit. ‘sons of the soil’), legitimized by the claim of prior arrival to and thus ownership of the land before the mass arrival of Chinese and Indian immigrant labour during the colonial late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Abraham 2004). Yasmin’s film Sepet, however, challenges the fairness of bumiputeraism: Orked’s mother and Kak Yam highlight this in a conversation about Orked receiving a government scholarship to study overseas but not Jason, her Chinese boyfriend who scored better in the national exams. Yasmin also exposes the binaristic logic about Malay subjectivity which traces its beginnings to the Manichean colonizer/colonized relationship. As a former British colony aiming for the ultimate form of mimicry through its pursuit of modernization, material progress and respect in carrying out the capitalist imperative in the eyes of the colonizer/West, there is insecurity and an inferiority complex about its developing nation status as ‘not quite/not white’ (Bhabha 1994: 92), not fully developed and somehow still lagging behind the West (and others within Malaysia). The films of Yasmin Ahmad 111 Sepet reflects this idea of mimicry and ‘not quite/not white’ on a more personal note, embodying it in the character of Lin’s mixed-race boyfriend, whom Orked claims Lin is attracted to because he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio. Returning to the larger picture of Malaysian race politics, more disturbing is that the discussions about nationalist development and lagging behind is often dominated by the focus on the majority Malays only, rather than Malaysian multi-ethnic society as a whole, or the indigenous Orang Asli, the urban Tamil poor and any other economically marginalized non-Malay groups. Concurrently in this mimicry pursuit of modernity and catch-up-with-the-West, there is fear of losing one’s authenticity and ‘core’ values (couched in the oppositional and essentialist rhetoric of Eastern, Asian or Muslim values) as clearly evidenced in Akmal’s columns, not to mention the discourse of Asian values espoused by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and other Asian leaders during the 1990s. The Asian values model holds that the extremes of Western liberalism and secularism or, more precisely, democracy and observing the rule of law, lead to hedonism and anarchy, as illustrated during calls for reformasi in street demonstrations in 1998 or what Mahathir calls ‘mob rule’ (Mahathir 2001: 9). While East Asian leaders relied on neo-Confucian models of socio-economic and political governance (see Goh, this volume), Malaysia turned to neo-Islamization, re-inventing an Islam that would be receptive to capitalist industry and enterprise (Mahathir 1993: 7–11). Furthermore, with regard to civilizational discourses and histories, the Malay subject again feels inadequate when comparing the relatively recent and short duration of the Melaka Sultanate (c. 1400–1511) with those of the ancient Chinese, Arab and Hindu empires. The foundation of Malay culture is animistic, overlaid with Hindu-Buddhist traditions, Sufi mystical teachings in the fifteenth century and, more encompassingly, orthodox Sunni Islam of the school of Shafi’i. In contrast to the overt patriarchal discourses and structures of these Other Asian civilizations, Malay adat, based on gender bilaterality and complementarity, recognized women’s social roles as equally important to those of men and accorded them commensurate power. It was only with the introduction and implementation of Islamic laws during periods of resurgent Islam (such as the 1970s onwards) that Malay Muslim men, like their Arab counterparts, for example, could attempt to assert and negotiate with adat more patriarchal control over Malay women (Wazir 1992: 231). Control over Malay women is especially pertinent in the reaction to Yasmin’s films (and to Yasmin herself as the attacks seem ‘personal’) for daring to portray a Malay woman who marries out of the ‘race’ (like Yasmin) and whose character, Orked, did not even broach the subject of conversion to Islam with her Chinese boyfriend. According to film critic Hassan Muthalib in his notes on Gubra, Malay male honour (maruah) is at stake when Malay women are attracted to Chinese men (as reflected in the relationships between Orked/Jason in Sepet; between their Malay housekeeper, Kak Yam and a Chinese hospital attendant, and between Orked/Alan in Gubra). Such cross-racial forays on the part of Malay women challenge the power and control that Malay men have over them. This point is also articulated in a scene in Sepet between Orked and her best friend’s boyfriend who alleges: ‘You’re just a stupid Malay girl who think you’re too good 112 G.C. Khoo for your own race!’ She counters this with, ‘For generations, Malay men have been marrying outside their race. … [N]ow when a woman wants to do it, everyone’s flapping.’ Here, Orked’s perceived transgression of her patriarchal culture threatens the integrity of the Malay social body. However, this Malay social body has historically adapted to the various religious and cultural waves over the region, integrating each new cultural element with pre- existing ones and eventually giving rise to a syncretic form of Islam. Depending on one’s position on the political and cultural spectrum, one can either embrace syncretism for its inclusivity and adaptation as Yasmin has, or regard it disdain- fully as schizophrenic, impure and a sign of certain weakness or deviance. Sepet was discussed during Parliament and criticized for not reflecting national identity partly because of its creolized ‘rojak language’. Thus, Yasmin’s films present a dilemma for Malay conservatives: are they Malaysian or Malay? Not only do they present Chinese and Malay characters, these characters speak in Malay, Cantonese, Peranakan Malay, Hokkien and English. In addition, they code-switch and are bilingual, if not trilingual. These cross-ethnic conversations display empathetic understanding and a need to find common ground with the other. Orked inserts Cantonese into her mostly English conversation with Jason who answers in Malay. Keong lapses into Hokkien in a moment of vulnerability when confessing his fears about his mother’s safety to Jason who then replies in Hokkien, although he mostly speaks in Cantonese. As truly hybrid products, Rabun, Sepet and Gubra illustrate the operation of the slash in the middle of ‘Malay/sian’. Thus, the vicious reaction towards Yasmin stems from her disarticulating the elite version of Malay subjectivity built on the pillars of ketuanan Melayu and scripturalist Islam (more later) while drawing links with Chineseness of a non-stereotypical form. Aside from challenging the elite construction of Malay subjectivity, Yasmin proposes a cosmopolitan version of Islam that crosses ethnic and religious boundaries. By ‘cosmopolitan’, I refer to theories of cosmopolitanism which respect cultural difference but do not enforce borders around ethnicity. In particular, I find David Hollinger’s definition of cosmopolitanism, as opposed to pluralism, relevant to Malaysia: one that ‘is willing to put the future of every culture at risk through the sympathetic but critical scrutiny of other cultures [whereas] pluralism is more concerned to protect and perpetuate particular, existing cultures’ (1995: 85–6). Moreover, pluralism promotes affiliations on the narrower grounds of shared history and is quicker to find reasons for drawing boundaries between communities (ibid.). This distinction between an ‘ideal’ cosmopolitanism and the reality of Malaysian pluralism is important as it provides an alternative model of reading and thinking outside the existing system of racialization. In short, cosmopolitanism as a philosophy holds to a sense of shared humanity committed to common values based on mutual respect and universal rights that transcend ethnic and national loyalties (Vertovec and Cohen 2002). It also recognizes and accepts diversity in others and multiple identities within the self, engages critically with the world, and includes a sense of global belonging that can be integrated into everyday life practice (ibid.). Such an inherent cosmopolitanism projected by Yasmin Ahmad and other The films of Yasmin Ahmad 113 Malaysian indie filmmakers trouble their detractors. Not only do independent films reflect ‘transethnic solidarities’ (Mandal 2004) in their mode of production, on screen they represent the ethnic and linguistic diversity missing from the majority of Malay commercial films. Independent filmmakers’ predominantly secular and liberal attitudes, regarded as associated with the West but not necessarily the reality, and their savvy global belonging seem to pose a threat to Malay cinema. For me, deploying a cosmopolitan framework to discuss indie films strategically allows ethnic loyalties and racialization to be deconstructed; it also enables a focus on other aspects of subjectivity that can be read as universal, humanist or common to all Malaysians, one able to transcend mere pluralism. Yasmin’s films fit this bill as they have a cosmopolitan sensibility in their approach to representations of Malays and non-Malays living in a multi-ethnic society. In an interview, she emphasised aspects of humanism in her latest film, Mukhsin: ‘My only hope is that more people around the world might get to see how I feel about certain aspects of humanity and the human condition’ (The Visitor 2006). Next I will analyse the Islamicization of Malaysian modernity and Malay subjectivity before showing in another section how Yasmin’s Sufi Islam challenges hegemonic Malaysian Islam.

Modernity and the Islamicization of Malay subjectivity Malaysian Islam is perceived as peripheral compared with Islam from the centre – from the Arab Middle East. Lily Zubaidah Rahim observes that limited Arabic language literacy among Malay Muslims accounts significantly for their sense of religious disempowerment, ‘deep-seated theological insecurity, and inferiority’ and thus largely restricts the expression of Islam to ‘an adherence to rituals, outward appearances and behaviour’ (2006: 11). The rise of resurgent Islam in Malaysia during the 1970s and 1980s, leading to state political legitimacy being partially defined by Islamic principles, further highlighted this by drawing attention to Malaysian practices of Islam. Just as the Malay leadership had to reconcile the idea of ‘Islam as a way of life’ with capitalist economic ethics, Malays themselves became self-conscious about the ‘authenticity’ of their syncretic Islamic identity and about the relationship between Malay and Muslim. This ‘refashioning of Islam led to contested interpretations of what constitutes “Islamic” behaviour’ (Nagata 1997: 80). Contemporary Malays derive more cachet from identifying themselves as Muslims than as Malays of diverse economic, cultural and regional backgrounds. As Muslims, they draw affinity with global Islam and the moral community of the ummah (Sharifah Zaleha 2000: 31; Peletz 2002: 231; Martinez 2006). Exacerbated by rapid state modernity, Islam becomes reflexively the answer to the excesses of modernization; it provides a moral path to follow and promises certainty over confusion and anarchy which result from too much freedom (Khoo 2006b: 194–5). The shift from Malayness to being Muslim also pre-empts philosophical anxiety about one’s cultural political identity; in particular, the Malay/Bumi dilemma faced by the new Malay middle class (Khoo 2006a). This dilemma is prompted by the 114 G.C. Khoo vast and rapid socio-economic changes affecting Malays since the introduction of the National Economic Policy (1971–1990) and the psychological struggle and political debate over whether bumiputeraism should continue. Given Melaka’s relatively shorter and more recent history, not to mention its narrower geographical influence, the lure of civilizational discourse is undoubtedly so strong that an early mytho-historical text, Sejarah Melayu (‘The Malay Annals’), traces the lineage of Melaka kings back to Alexander the Great, ‘who assumes in the text the status of a glorious Muslim king’ (Andaya and Andaya 2001: 35). On the other hand, various Malay epics display the heterogeneity and hybridity of that initial moment of inter-civilizational encounter with the coming of Islam (Farish Noor 2002: 231). The world of these epics where ‘identities remained shifting, open and fluid’ (ibid.: 238) contrasts greatly with the present Islamist tendency to erase the Malay pre-Islamic past of seafaring Malays in Europe and to claim that Malay civilization only emerged with the coming of Islam which ‘civilized’ the putatively barbaric Malay (ibid.: 229). Even today, the image of the Malay diaspora (consisting of communities of seafarers, individual sailors and labourers) cannot compete with the specific visual strength of the monumental buildings (ruined temples, palaces, fortresses) that have long outlasted their human inhabitants as physical archaeological evidence of Buddhist and Hindu civilizations in Southeast Asia, as well as of Islamic civilizations elsewhere. This may in a way explain the 1990s’ preoccupation with creating large-scale Turkic/Arabic-influenced Islamic architecture like those found in Putra Jaya, including the Prime Minister’s residence. Former Prime Minister Mahathir’s speech at the 55th UMNO General Assembly which warns of what will befall the ‘lazy Malay’ expresses this belief:

Economically, Malay businesses will be limited to stalls with blue plastic tops at the roadside. There will be no Malay brick shops in town. Definitely there will be no skyscrapers owned by Malay corporate individuals, not even funds with Malay interests. (Mahathir 2001: 32)

Here, civilizational discourse is bound intricately with discourses of modernization and development, with Malay culture signifying impermanence and transience (‘blue plastic tops at the roadside’) and weakness and vulnerability compared with the lasting strength of urban ‘brick shops’ (associated with the Chinese) and the monumental modern Western grandeur of skyscrapers. In closing, Mahathir warns that without hard work and striving for knowledge, Malays will ‘only remain a name in history’. He belittles the legendary hero Hang Tuah’s words that the Malays will never vanish from the face of the earth, as mere ‘magic words’ (ibid.: 48), thereby submitting not only to the Orientalist conception of the lazy Malay, but also to that of Malay culture as superstitious and backward. If the ethnicity of the Malay subject, burdened by the colonial stereotype ironically perpetuated by postcolonial state discourse, is unreliable and inappropriate in the national pursuit of capitalist industrialization, the Muslim aspect of his identity, The films of Yasmin Ahmad 115 however, can be appropriated, re-invented, made compatible with capitalism and suitably engineered for local and global (political) consumption. In keeping with civilizational discourse, Islam offered something the pre-Islamic Malay was seen to lack and which coincided with Western European methodology: rationalization. No one put it better than Mahathir himself who noted in his book, The Challenge, that:

the successful propagation of Islam throughout the world had its basis in the organization and discipline of the Islamic society, compared with the unen- lightened (jahiliah) society before it, and the readiness of Muslims to conform to the organization and discipline. (Mahathir 1986: 136; emphases mine)

Implicit in this statement is the suggestion that Malays are weak because they lack such discipline and organization, whether in politics, business or education. Thus the push towards Islamic identity and away from a focus on ethnic Malayness is rather a pragmatic move to draw upon methods of rationalization also conveniently found in modern industrial societies. The idea of a moderate form of Islam, ‘Islam hadhari’ (from the Arabic meaning ‘civilizational Islam’, see Aura 2006) which Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi advanced as an alternative to stave off foreign investors’ fears about Islamic terrorism again conforms to this idea. He claims that Islam hadhari is ‘very practical in motivating Muslims to progress and improve their situation’ (Bernama 2005). In Malaysia, Muslim identity is favoured by the state because Islam organizes, constrains and disciplines the ‘lazy’ Malay body, turning it into docile and productive labour for a stable capitalist economy eager to attract foreign investment. The subjection of the Muslim body can be obtained through the tools of violence and ideology as well as through more direct, physical and subtle ways (Foucault 1984: 173). In the eyes of the general Malaysian population today, a Muslim is someone who exhibits and makes visible and public his/her Islamic identity, marking it clearly on the body (through dress) and repeated acts such as attending the Friday afternoon prayers in the mosque. Although Malays are defined as Muslims in the Constitution, for example, many Malay women feel the necessity to wear the tudung (headscarf) today as an outward sign of their identity as modest Muslims. They claim that the act of putting on the tudung is voluntary (Nagata 1995). Such gendered ‘docile’ Muslim bodies are produced through repeated performative public or social acts (Butler 1990) that discipline, self-discipline, survey and, ultimately, normalize the idea of what a Muslim is. Although Islam already imposes on Muslim bodies ‘constraints, prohibitions, or obligations’ such as observing the five pillars of Islam (Foucault 1984: 180), the most recent surge of Islamicization far exceeds the forms of regimenting Malay Muslim subjectivity in the past through its sheer complexity, breadth, ties with consumption and micro-management of detail. It has occurred through the mainstreaming of Islamic discourse in the 1980s; the establishment of Islamic institutions, Islamic banking and insurance systems; the pursuit of halal-ization in the food and restaurant industry, and the introduction and 116 G.C. Khoo popularization of Islamic fashion and music and the creation and proliferation of Islamic spaces (mosques, prayer rooms in office buildings, schools and university departments). The practice of Islam is codified and exercised through strict regimes of regulated social behaviour, peer pressure to conform, the syariah court (Peletz 2002: 19), Department of Religious Affairs, changes to laws and local ordinances, and stigmatization. Fines are levied for unmarried couples caught in public parks holding hands or being in close proximity (khalwat), eating in public during the fasting month, drinking alcohol in public, and cross-dressing. The process of Islamic rationalization which saw the reworking of ‘the existing syncretic religious framework into a recognizably Islamic one’ by scripturalist clerics began in the 1940s (Sharifah Zaleha 2000: 29), and continues into the postcolonial era. What Sharifah Zaleha calls ‘scriptural Islam’ is also called Wahhabi Islam, a rigid interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence that is dominant in conservative Arab societies. It advocates the establishment of an Islamic cleric-led state, government by Shariah law, regulation of strict dress-codes especially for women and the replication of seventh-century Medina (Lily Z. Rahim 2006: 3). Wahhabi- influenced radical Muslims have a very literal understanding of Islam and see the world in ‘black and white terms’ (ibid.). This emphasis on a scriptural and literal interpretation of Islam entails a superficial understanding of the Muslim body and its identity as purely performative, ‘a surface whose permeability is politically regulated’ (Butler 1990: 139). Consequently, the general belief is that Islam is not so much a matter of faith practised in the privacy of one’s home or about one’s individual relationship with God, but one that has to be made fully visible in the public eye, open to the control and subjection of ‘the Malay Panopticon’ (Peletz 2002: 235) and other disciplinary apparatuses. By ‘the Malay Panopticon’, Peletz was referring to the way that most ordinary (and other) Malays appear to feel that they live in a Panopticon where anything they say or do can be used against them and where they strategically use Islamic symbols and idioms to articulate their claims to high status. At the macro level, the state places weight on making Islamic identity a visible presence on the multi-ethnic landscape of the nation because it is competing for Malay votes with Parti Islam SeMalaysia, the Islamic opposition party, and therefore has to be seen as trying to out-Islamicize PAS (Nagata 1997: 90; Hussein 2002). In the race against PAS, UMNO wants to project a general and widespread impression of its Islamic credentials, mark(et) and propagate this visual image through quantifiable categories and means – enumeration and classification measures like the census, economic statistics (Darshni 2006), the number of Muslim bodies and Malay Muslim entrepreneurs as opposed to non-Malay entrepreneurs, etc. – not through the quality of faith. Indeed, the crackdown on Darul Arqam in 1994 was motivated by political reasons rather than theological difference (Muhammad Syukri Salleh 1995: 227). Public image and discursive representation matter for the state to accrue political power. Sadly, the general Malaysian public is equally implicated in valuing public image over inner substance and content (Farish Noor 2002: 301). Islamic social science or so-called Islamized knowledge is equally problematic The films of Yasmin Ahmad 117 in its celebration of absolute oppositions and the proliferation of Islamic terminology, which remains ‘ornamental’ – ‘a veneer over orthodox, Western social science’ (Alatas 1996: 409). Similarly, this cultural obsession with public appearance and concern for surface meaning and external form rather than content, which is evident in a Syariah-minded (scripturalist) Islam, facilitates the rather narrow Islamic readings of independent Malaysian films by critics like Akmal Abdullah and Faisal Tehrani. Deploying the Asian values framework and fostering moral panic, Akmal can effectively shut down certain indie filmmakers and limit democracy. Scripturalist Islam restricts the scope of textual approaches to narrow moral criteria. So rather than trying to understand what nudity metaphorically connotes in the foreign art films, or accepting it as a representation of other cultures which do not have to impinge on our own, Akmal regards nudity as ‘antimoral’ and thus to be censored without debate or further intellectualizing. When this narrow textual interpretation expands into the secular world of independent filmmaking, it is a collision of op- posites: for to view the world through a cosmopolitan lens is to ‘endors[e] reflective distance from one’s cultural affiliations, a broad understanding of other cultures and customs, and a belief in universal humanity’ (Anderson 1998: 267).

Sepet and Gubra: Sufism as cosmopolitanism Briefly, Sepet revolves around a 17-year-old Malay woman, Orked, who falls in love with 19-year-old Jason, a Chinese black-market video disc seller. The film ends with Jason’s death in an accident. Gubra opens eight years later and we find Orked married to Arif, a much older Malay man. Orked’s marriage is tested when she discovers her husband is unfaithful to her and she seeks comfort in a friendship with Alan, Jason’s brother. Unconnected plot-wise to Orked’s story is a parallel narrative about another group of Malay characters in a small town. This story revolves around a young bilal (or muezzin), Li, his wife Maz, and their cordial relationship with the two sex workers in their neighbourhood. Sepet’s most obvious theme is that of inter-ethnic relations, as manifested in the scenes of Jason reading an excerpt from Tagore to his mother who finds it ‘strange’ that an Indian poet could capture her feelings as ethnic Peranakan Chinese; Orked summarizing Fanon’s anti-colonial racial ideas for her best friend early in the film; and Orked explaining her attraction for Japanese-Chinese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro as no different from her friend’s crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. More specifically, Yasmin’s interethnic pairing of a Malay woman and Chinese man differs from the similar pairing in Teck Tan’s Spinning Gasing (2000). Tan’s Malay female protagonist, Yati, is secretly in love with Harry; not for his ethnic difference but because they have been friends for a long time. Orked in Sepet, however, openly admits her attraction for men with slanted eyes (‘mata sepet’), i.e. Chinese, clearly illustrating a bold articulation of Malay female desire for the Other. Yasmin’s cosmopolitan representations raise the possibility of transcending racialized boundaries of religion and language, and blurring those between domestic/ public, human/animal, physical love/love for God, and the sacred and the profane. 118 G.C. Khoo But in addition to this, I argue that her films make transparent to an audience of non-Malays as well as Malays, the private in the public, emphasising the invisible and metaphorical over the visible and literal. This strategy borrows from Sufi Islam, which is regarded as directly antithetical to Wahhabi Islam (Lily Z. Rahim 2006: 16, footnote 8). Sufism interrogates those boundaries between private and public, secular and religious, Muslim and kafir, appearance and reality – all of which are crucial pillars (or crutches) in the architecture of the contemporary Malay racialized ‘I’/subject. Gubra refers overtly to Sufi Islam by citing Sufi philosopher Rumi’s words, ‘The lamps may be different but the light is the same.’ But actually, Sufi philosophy appears earlier in Sepet, though subtly mediated through Rabindranath Tagore (who incidentally translated The Songs of Kabir, a fifteenth-century Sufi literary classic). Jason is heard reading from Tagore in the film’s opening: ‘When I must punish him, he becomes more a part of me. When I make him weep, I weep with him. I alone may judge him, for only he who loves may chastise.’ This all- powerful but also all-merciful and all-loving ‘I’ anticipates the message of God’s Compassion in the opening of Gubra. Sufi mystical quotations from Tagore about the relationship between God and humankind bookend Sepet and the film ends enigmatically with: ‘It is as near to you as your life, but you can never wholly know it.’ Such tantalising words hint of a divine presence or intervention in the plot twist as Orked hears Jason’s voice on her mobile phone even though the audience has just seen him lying on the road unconscious or dead. Several of the married Malay couples represented show the possibility of healthy loving relationships that are both emotional and physical. In Sepet, we are introduced to a supportive liberal Malay couple (modelled after Mak Inom and Pak Atan in Rabun), who demonstrate their affection for each other openly. There are domestic scenes of Orked’s parents teasing each other (‘bergurau’), father tickling mother, and a scene where mum playfully yanks off dad’s sarung and exposes him in his underwear. Gubra opens with two affectionate couples: the bilal’s wife preparing toast and coffee for him and then hand-feeding him. This is followed by a parallel scene of play between Orked and her towel-clad husband as he dumps her into the bath and gives her a shampoo with her clothes on. Such playful scenes together with other sexual innuendos in the film have provoked Faisal Tehrani to come up with a litany of eighteen Malay nouns describing expressions of love and affection in Gubra. He concludes from this that ‘it is as if the theme of love is all about kissing and hugging whoever we like without limitations and guidelines’ (my translation from Malay).The bawdy references and sexual innuendos led Faisal to believe that the new filmmakers and Yasmin are trapped by Western definitions when film should instead ‘return [us] to our true selves, to traditional storytelling based on race/nation.’ The new Malay middle-class cultural producers’ attempts to recuperate adat in the form of sexuality is one that is facilitated by Western liberal discourse and modernity, yet there is always the potential anti-Western slippage into dichotomies in assuming that any sexual discourse has to be ‘Western’. Thus, scenes showing a patient’s exposed derrière at the hospital and Arif prancing around clad only in a towel around his waist in his own bedroom are deemed unnecessary and ‘Western’. The films of Yasmin Ahmad 119 These scenes present an earthy, comic side of sex and human bodies which is shared across gender and ethnic difference, and although some are domestic scenes, their public visibility onscreen heightens the contradictions with the very different spectacle of visible Islam in the Malaysian public sphere. Despite the bawdy references, the films are also filled with Muslim references where Orked’s family is shown practising Islam: our first glimpse of Orked in Sepet is of her praying, and the only times her mother, herself and Kak Yam the housekeeper abstain is when they are menstruating. The liberal Islam as practised by Orked’s family is fully compatible with Malay adat and secular modernity, and Orked reflects this confident Malay identity by wearing baju kurung (traditional long-sleeved shift worn over a long loose skirt) and trainers, leaving her long hair loose and uncovered rather than wearing a tudung (head scarf) with her baju kurung, or wearing Western clothes with her uncovered hair. This ‘hybrid’ representation of the confident young Malay contrasts greatly with the above discussion of the conflicted Malay subject. Indeed, Pnina Werbner notes that Sufis ‘tend to thrive on the liberalism and pluralism of the secular state’ and Sufism is ‘committed to peaceful coexistence and tolerance’ (Werbner 2003: 7). Gubra opens with ‘Bismillah ir rahman ir rahim …’, which means ‘In The Name of Allah the Merciful and Compassionate’. This theme of mercy and compassion permeates the film: from the reconciliation between Jason’s parents, to the compassion shown by Bilal Li and his wife to Temah, the sex worker/single mother who discovers she is HIV-positive, and to Ki, the neighbourhood ne’er-do-well who tries to steal from Temah one night. Bilal Li catches up with Ki when he runs off from the house and then pats him on the head before departing. This gesture of patting him on the head recalls an earlier scene when he pats a three-legged dog on the head, urging the dog to get off the road for its own safety. Hassan Muthalib reads these parallel scenes as suggestive of equating Ki, a useless, immoral human being, to a dog, thereby tearing down the hierarchy between humankind and the animal kingdom. However, according to Sufi Muslim poets and philosophers Ibn Arabi (Al Futuhat Al Makiyya, Vol. 2: 326) and Rumi (Fihi ma fihi: 35), expressing love for any creature is ultimately a metaphor for expressing love for God since He created them all (in Chittick 2000: 67). Closer to home, Sumatra-born Sufi poet, Hamzah Fansuri interprets the Quranic line, ‘wheresoever ye turn there is the face of God’ to mean that ‘all creatures are none other than our Self; all human beings are our brothers’ (Al-Attas 1970: 430). Yet, Faisal’s point that Temah was probably fortunate in contracting HIV because this became her wake-up call from God to repent typifies the reaction of the hegemonic Malay subject and scripturalists who have to abide by strict and rigid Islamic guidelines. Such guidelines were sought in particular to the dog-petting scene which evoked earnest discussion online as to whether it is permissible within Islam to touch dogs (which part of the dog, what you have to do after coming in contact with the dog, etc.). What emerges from Faisal’s criticism is the necessity to distinguish Islam from other religions, to draw up clear boundaries and to establish the authority of his scriptural knowledge of Islam as somehow more comprehensive, complete (and superior) to that of those who have more liberal interpretations of Islam. He is 120 G.C. Khoo contemptuous of the quote from Sufi poet, Jalaludin Rumi, which closes the film: ‘The lamps may be different but the light is the same.’ This saying highlights the common grounds among those who practise different religions, as illustrated by the continuity of the Bismillah prayer as voiceover segueing into the background sound of Jason’s parents praying together at a temple, Alan praying in a church, and Temah reciting the Quran with Mas, the bilal’s wife. In this series of juxtaposed shots, Alan and Mas’ prayers coincide (one in English, the other in Malay), one flowing into the other, as if to show that despite the linguistic and religious difference, a common humanism prevails across religions. But according to Faisal, equating everyone in the eyes of God is the devil’s work. He further cites the Quranic verse (surah al-Kafirun) which states ‘You’ve got your religion, we’ve got ours.’ He then cautions that we have to be vigilant so as not to be like them. Such a combined sense of moral superiority and ethnic entitlement, as expressed by Faisal in upholding racialized pluralism, also underlies the position of those who saw the move to establish an Interfaith Commission in Malaysia as a threat to the superiority of Islam (and Malay hegemony) in 2005. The Sufis would say that Faisal is merely putting his faith into practice, or ‘acting with the limbs’ in his doctrinal approach to understanding the film. Unlike scripturalist Islam which relies on blind submission to God’s will by obeying the commands set down in the Sharia, Sufism is ‘an invisible spiritual presence that animates all authentic expressions of Islam’ (Chittick 2000: 9; emphasis mine). Sufi scholar William Chittick summarises that Islam can be understood on three basic levels: the most external seems to show ‘a religion that tells people what to do and what not to do’ (as codified by the Sharia); on a deeper level, Islam teaches people ways to understand themselves and the world (corresponding to the mind or faith); and lastly, on the deepest level, it tells us how to transform ourselves to be ‘in harmony with the ground of all being’, and ‘to achieve nearness to God’(ibid.: 5–6). This third dimension, Chittick claims, is ‘the heart of religion’ and is usually discussed in terms of ‘sincerity, love, virtue and perfection’ (ibid.: 6). Also in a hadith, the Prophet defined Islamic faith as ‘to acknowledge with the heart, to voice with the tongue, and to act with the limbs’(ibid.: 154, footnote 5). Chittick interprets this hadith as suggesting that human beings are compounded of three domains of faith ranked in a clear hierarchy, with the heart being the inmost awareness, tongue the articulation of self-awareness or rational speech, and limbs representing bodily parts (ibid.: 6). These three domains of religiosity are intertwined but also distinct: with the heart standing in for right seeing, the tongue articulating right thinking, and the limbs right doing. ‘The domain of right activity was the specialty of jurists (Sharia), that of right thinking the specialty of theologians, and that of right seeing, the specialty of Sufis’ (ibid.: 7). Yet, it is not the eyes or the mind that sees things as they are, but ‘the core of the heart’ where ‘right seeing will then radiate forth and permeate every pore of the body, determining thought and activity’ (ibid.). Gubra advances the notion of right seeing, one that is fully compatible with, if not an extension of, Sepet’s cosmopolitanism, here defined as incorporating ideas from diverse transnational sources such as Fanon, Rabindranath Tagore, Wong Kar Wai, and Rumi, that help build a critical humanist and self-reflective consciousness The films of Yasmin Ahmad 121 towards ethno- and religious-nationalism in Malaysia.

Conclusion: dream sequence Gubra shows the multiple ways in which Malaysians practise their faith and the various levels of perceiving God and spirituality, love relationships being only one manifestation of achieving nearness to God. Love knows no boundaries, as Orked says in Sepet, ‘You like who you like’. The film’s underlying Sufi philosophy deconstructs binaries that are foundational to the Malay subject: Chinese-Malay; inner/outer Muslim, Muslim/non-Muslim. Appearances are deceptive: Arif who verbalises his love and support for Orked during her father’s illness, betrays her by having a mistress. When she gives him an ultimatum, he promises to leave his mistress but this also turns out to be a lie. Hassan Muthalib compares the outward material wealth that Arif represents as a New Malay (shiny expensive hobby motorcycle, big house) with the lower middle-class but sincere Alan (old truck, lives in his parents’ small old house), to pose the question to audiences, who are unable to transcend their ethnic loyalties, of who is the more virtuous man, Muslim or non-Muslim, Malay or Chinese. Finally, while neither Arif nor Ki, who commits a heinous crime towards the end of the film, is able to achieve perfection or unity with God based on their actions, the film does not show them being punished, thus reminding us that it is not for humans to judge but ultimately for God, whose mercy and compassion we are dependent upon. This is appropriately conveyed through the Bismillah prayer as voiceover of this crime scene. The dream sequence after the end credits has become quintessentially a Yasmin trademark to bring the dead back to unite with the living in utopian fashion. Such idealistic cosmopolitanism and Sufi tolerance for difference reflected in her films contravene the existing pluralist racialization of the majority, bringing to the surface deep social antagonisms, as reflected in the cultural debates and discussions on television, the print media and most passionately, on the internet. These films are less a representation of social reality than an ideal of what a truly cosmopolitan Malaysia (minus the slash) could be. To conclude this film analysis, it is worth flashing back to a scene in Gubra: a hijab-wearing mother and her daughter, visiting a family member hospitalized in the same ward as Jason’s abu- sive father, offer chicken rendang instead of taking offence and retreating when the latter complains loudly of missing the taste of pork. Retreating into the safety of racialization perhaps would have been too easy. Cosmopolitanism, although Yasmin makes it look so simple, is a struggle: a struggle in the soul; a struggle to relieve our paranoid fears of losing our pure selves while becoming and merging with the other (and ultimately with God in the Sufi vocabulary); a struggle to move beyond stereotypes, binaries, and boundaries in Malaysia which, however difficult the process, will ultimately, as the text implies, yield rich rewards. To aid in deconstructing racialization and developing cosmopolitan consciousness, Yasmin confidently pulls together non-Malaysian humanist knowledges and ideas to suggest an alternative cosmopolitan Malay Muslim subjectivity that does not require surveillance by the Malay Panopticon. Thus, she has set an example for 122 G.C. Khoo other racialized groups in Malaysia to consciously strive to construct their identities in similar cosmopolitan directions. My analysis of Yasmin Ahmad’s films using theories of cosmopolitanism demonstrates that a certain hegemonic prescribed Islamic discourse impinges upon other cosmopolitan ideas and cultural practices such as independent filmmaking in Malaysia. In the spirit of anti-racialization, my essay demonstrates that discussions about Islam should not be under the sole proprietorship of Muslim Malays, particularly those who hold on to an intolerant and dogmatic strain of Islam, but should instead be approached with ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ (Mignolo 2000: 723). It bears saying that elements of Wahhabi or scripturalist Islam which is mostly associated with PAS doctrine, are seeping into the mainstream (to those who may not regard themselves as PAS supporters), and to a certain extent, influencing UMNO – whether through UMNO’s silent support, or through UMNO policies such as Islam hadhari. After all, invoking a Muslim concept to secure national unity over a multicultural populace suggests that the Prime Minister is moving away from a secular vision towards a more religious-based one. At the same time, while some might regard the current centrality of Islamic discourse as signalling a shift from ketuanan Melayu to ketuanan Islam (Islamic primacy), I would argue that ketuanan Islam (if we want to go so far as to call Islamization by this term) is precisely built on the foundation of Malay primacy, and follows the path I have outlined above of the processes of shifting self-identification for Malays. The post-millennial appeal to Islamic discourse and morality by Malay cultural elites (and politicians) cannot be unhinged from the desire to continue NEP-style affirmative action and to reinforce Malay primacy in an ethno-nationalist framework that is now out of alignment with the calls for national unity under Bangsa Malaysia touted in Wawasan 2020. Ting’s chapter (this volume) on the introduction of the term ketuanan Melayu in history textbooks in 2002 for the first time after Independence supports this idea that ketuanan Melayu is here to stay. As for the term ketuanan Islam, I am uncomfortable with using it as it does little to address the tensions within Islam or to suggest that out of the diverse range and interpretations, only a non-cosmopolitan ethnically exclusivist kind reigns supreme in Malaysia. Surely such a narrow interpretation of religion contradicts the spirit of social justice, humanity, tolerance and love inherent in the faith. In fact PAS has during the 1980s pointed out that the racial privileging of Malays over others (bumiputeraism) or assabiyah (tribalism or tribal nationalism) goes against Islam. In conclusion, Yasmin’s films undo racialization and what Goh and Holden in the introduction to this volume call ‘racial governmentality’ even as they showcase ethnic and cultural difference in a vernacular multicultural climate that embraces difference. These films do not distinguish between multiracialism and multiculturalism (which to me seems like a futile endeavour in the Malaysian case). Neither do the films question or engage with the neoliberal economic impulse of neoliberal multiculturalism which is regarded as irrelevant to cinematic humanist storytelling. Instead, in the paucity of upholding multiculturalism in current political discourse, when Indian temples are being destroyed in the name of development and Hindraf leaders arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act, progressive The films of Yasmin Ahmad 123 Malaysians adopt the state language of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’, that of Bangsa Malaysia, and ask whether it was a mere fantasy or a passing fancy.

Note 1 I would like to thank colleagues old and new for the stimulating conversations about race and politics in Malaysia and for pointing me to materials I would not have found without their help: David Lim; Kamal Fadzil; Hassan Muthalib for his insightful reading of Gubra through Sufi Islam; Sumit Mandal and Sharifah Zaleha. I would also like to acknowledge my feminist theory honours seminar students at Gender, Sexuality and Culture, the Australian National University, together with whom I read Foucault: Sarah Maslen and Anna Stewart.

Films cited Buli (2004) directed and written by Afdlin Shauki, produced by Grand Brilliance. Gubra (2006) directed by Yasmin Ahmad, produced by Chilli Pepper Film Production and Nusan Bakti Corporation. Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (‘The Last Communist’) (2006) directed by Amir Muhammad, produced by Red Films. Mukhsin (2006) directed by Yasmin Ahmad, produced by Ahmad Puad Onak and Rosnah Mohd. Kassim. Rabun (‘My Failing Eyesight’) (2003) directed by Yasmin Ahmad, produced by Rosnah Kassim, Grand Brilliance and MHz Film. Sepet (2004) directed by Yasmin Ahmad, produced by MHz Film, distributed by Columbia Tristar. Spinning Gasing (2000) directed by Teck Tan, produced by Dominique Hee, Teck Tan, Michael Tang, Niche Film, Spinning Gasing Films, distributed by Columbia Tristar. 7 Racial stereotypes in Singapore films Commercial value and critical possibilities

Kenneth Paul Tan

Commercial films in Singapore present numerous instances of stereotypes that mimic an uncritical knowledge of social life, reinforcing this knowledge by further obscuring the unequal relations of power, repressions, tensions and contradictions that advanced capitalist-industrial society constantly endeavours to subsume (Tan 2008). The pleasures that stereotypes, especially racial stereotypes, give audiences make them primary materials in the production of lucrative light entertainment. Propelled by the profit motive of the culture industry, racial stereotypes are circulated and re-circulated in ways that naturalize ‘common-sense’ theories of racial hierarchies and practices of racial discrimination, mostly inherited, in Singapore’s case, from colonial ideologies of race. Through popular light entertainment, racist expressions in the private and public spheres are naturalized and even legitimized as audiences relate pleasurably to onscreen racial stereotypes in complex processes of subject formation. This essay will not discuss racist expressions of a more explicit kind such as hate speech which is based mostly on irrational perceptions of the Other, advanced through deliberate misrepresentations, and produced with mischievous or malicious intent. The essay will, however, discuss implicitly racist expressions in popular culture, expressions – such as racial stereotypes – that are advanced without a clearly malicious intent. When, for example, individuals categorize themselves as members of an in-group, they tend to emphasize its unifying similarities but also to exaggerate its differences with respect to out-groups, derogating these out-groups as relatively inferior and perhaps even dangerous. Social categorization, therefore, often results in prejudiced attitudes and behaviours that resort to positive and negative stereotypes of self and Other respectively (for example, Tajfel 1981). Although such stereotypes are dependent upon the contexts of self-categorization, as images that are circulated in popular culture they are nevertheless relatively resilient in the way they simultaneously reflect and reinforce deeply embedded and taken- for-granted ideas about the Other and about cultural diversity itself. These racial stereotypes are circulated in popular culture for commercial advantage; and in that way, the culture industry helps to maintain and naturalize asymmetrical relations of power in society by securing acceptance of crude stereotypes as a part of harmless entertainment that even minority audiences should just not be too sensitive about and accept grudgingly; or worse still, take perverse pleasure in. Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 125 Inhabiting a privileged position in Singapore’s public discourse, ‘multiracialism’ has been an unsettled – and unsettling – term that bridges two rather distinct modes (or perhaps moods) of public expression: the celebratory and the paranoid. At one end, multiracialism is viewed as a sign of social harmony and a resource for social and cultural vibrancy, which is in turn often crudely valued for its economic potential within the spheres of tourism, the arts, and popular culture – including, of course, the filmmaking industry. At the other end, multiracialism is viewed as a practical solution to the imagined vulnerabilities associated with an ethnically diverse population, a solution that is always fragile and justified by a ‘slippery slope’ argument that presents the horror of racial strife and national disintegration as the rapid outcomes of complacency. Since gaining independence in 1965 following the failure of political merger with Malaysia, Singaporeans have been imbued with a widespread sense of insecurity. Official accounts of Singapore’s history as a history of vulnerability, augmented and popularized through ‘national education’ in schools and the wider public, often feature the Chinese-Malay riots of 1964 as evidence of Singapore’s social volatility (for examples, see Singapore Ministry of Information and the Arts (1999); Singapore National Heritage Board (1998)). And at the present time of heightened public sensitivity to extremism and terrorism as global phenomena, this sense of insecurity can be provoked to paranoid levels. In the exaggerated, over-the-top expressions of Singapore’s national rhetoric, Yao (2007) identifies a ‘culture of excess’ that arises from the need to tell and re-tell The Singapore Story of national vulnerability in order to revisit continually the historical site of trauma. But this need to revisit Singapore’s painful history collides with another coping mechanism: the need to look for an escape into comforting fantasies, particularly racial fantasies that are reflected in films portraying ethnically homogeneous worlds occupied by people like themselves, untainted by ethnic difference and the threats that difference is believed to present. Such films provide a momentary escape from the difficult fact of a multicultural society. Often though, ethnic difference is allowed to penetrate these films/fantasies, but it usually plays out in caricatures of the Other. Filmic portrayals of race still tend to offer a gross simplification of ethnic identity and relations as a means of containing – in fact, of ‘standing in for’ – the more confusing and threatening complexities of the real world. Coined by Walter Lippmann, stereotypes are ‘generalities, patternings and “typifications”’ for making sense of and speaking about a social reality that Lippman describes as a ‘great booming, buzzing confusion’ (quoted in Dyer 2002: 11). In films, token inclusions of minority characters often lock minority actors into minor, secondary, or background roles of little consequence. These roles not only lack character development and complexity, but may also be based on negative and unflattering images that re-circulate into the racial fantasies of the majority, motivated by both the conscious and the unconscious need for security and esteem, the former derived from certainty and simplicity, and the latter derived from positioning oneself as somehow superior to others. These racial stereotypes not only help mainstream audiences to put the Other in its place, but also implicitly inform common-sense ideas about racial differences and multiracial policies, and are in 126 K.P. Tan turn reproduced by the commercial exploitation of racial insecurities in a paranoid society. In other words, the film industry supplies racial stereotypes to mainstream audiences who demand an immediately gratifying means of coping with the prejudiced views that they have of the Other and the tension of maintaining multiracial harmony. Real social and cultural vibrancy has been deformed by films that sustain a hollow, disengaged, and crudely gratifying understanding of the Other. In the 1940s to 1960s, Singapore’s filmmaking studios, mainly Shaw and Cathay, produced a considerable output of mostly Malay-language films. This, according to film critic Raphaël Millet, was a period when Singapore ‘dominated … quite a large part of the Asian film industry’ (Millet 2006: 12). In fact, filmmaking in Singapore was a ‘cosmopolitan’ affair involving directors from India, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Historians of Singapore cinema, such as Jan Uhde and Yvonne Ng Uhde (2000), note how this ‘golden age’ of film production went into a dark period shortly after 1965 when Singapore gained political independence through its separation from Malaysia. With filmmaking resources and talents like P. Ramlee moving to Malaysia, virtually nothing of significance was produced in Singapore until a revival in the early 1990s supported by government funding and commercially accelerated, after 1998, by the efforts of Raintree Pictures, the fully owned filmmaking subsidiary of Singapore’s main broadcaster MediaCorp. This revival has seen the production of films either in English or in a mixture of Chinese dialects (including Mandarin), but hardly any films in Malay. Part of Raintree’s strategy has been to collaborate with regional production companies to produce bigger-budget projects; but since the tie-ups have mostly been with East Asian companies, the output has also been mostly Chinese-language films. This essay will analyse how multiracial Singapore has been represented in Chicken Rice War (an English-language film produced by Raintree), Money No Enough (a Chinese-language film that is currently the highest-grossing Singapore film), and TalkingCock The Movie (a low-budget film that is mainly in English but also contains a mix of other languages and dialects such as Mandarin, Hokkien, Malay, Punjabi, and so on). It will show how superficial representations in Chicken Rice War and Money No Enough gratify audiences by engaging their celebratory and paranoid modes of dealing with racial difference, thereby producing and reproducing superficial understandings of ethnicity in the context of an emerging neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore, where racial stereotypes are exploited to fuel consumption for a nascent film industry supported by government funding under its ‘Renaissance City’ aspirations:

Renaissance Singapore will be creative, vibrant and imbued with a keen sense of aesthetics. Our industries are supported with a creative culture that keeps them competitive in the global economy. The Renaissance Singaporean has an adventurous spirit, an inquiring and creative mind and a strong passion for life. Culture and the arts animate our city and our society consists of active citizens who build on our Asian heritage to strengthen the Singapore Heartbeat through expressing their Singapore stories in culture and the arts. (Singapore Ministry of Information and the Arts 2000) Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 127 Though the language of Renaissance Singapore is visionary, the ‘Singapore Heartbeat’ that it speaks of continues mostly to pulsate with caricatures of Singaporeans as Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Others, as well as their attendant hierarchies, since it is these caricatures that are most readily commodifiable for mass cultural consumption. The Renaissance City report is, after all, mostly about economics. Singapore’s emerging neoliberal multiculturalism neutralizes – sometimes denies – ‘dangerous’ racial stereotypes in favour of utopian multicultural fantasies that elide real socioeconomic issues facing ethnic communities. This chapter is a critique of this neoliberal multiculturalism and the ways in which it has led to the complete absence, under-representation, simplistic representation, or negative representation of racial minorities, found for example in films like Chicken Rice War and Money No Enough. The chapter argues for creative uses of popular culture as an exploratory and critical, yet still entertaining, medium to learn about complex identities and relations in more sophisticated and problematic terms, the beginnings of which may be detected in TalkingCock The Movie.

Chicken Rice War (2000) Chicken Rice War, a localized film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, tells the story of two rival hawker families – the Wongs and the Chans – whose chicken rice stalls have been situated next to each other for two decades. Whilst the two families bicker endlessly and even sabotage each other during a hawker authority inspection exercise, Fenson Wong (Pierre Png) and Audrey Chan (Lum May Yee) rehearse their lead roles in their university stage production of Romeo and Juliet. Fenson wins Audrey’s heart through his acting skills, the romantic poetry that he writes for her, and a Tiffany necklace that he presents to her as a birthday gift. But their love is threatened by the senseless inter-family feuds. Only when the two families discover that their supplier sold them infected chickens which caused their customers to become sick, do they gang up against the common enemy, and the film, unlike the Shakespearean tragedy, draws to a happy ending for all. Although stylishly filmed and edited, Chicken Rice War was ‘neither a commercial nor a critical success’ with several scenes appearing ‘forced and artificial’ (Millet 2006: 94). But true to its commercial character the film resorts to very pronounced racial coding. The protagonists – active subjects of the film’s narrative who are confronted by life’s challenges and eventually manage to overcome them – are all Chinese. Minority race characters are either inserted as a decorative trim, as comic relief, or as antagonists or obstacles to the protagonists’ development. A Malay drinks-seller (Zaliha Abd. Hamid), for example, functions as narrator, but she performs this role in the exaggerated style of a Chinese opera singer. Throughout the film, she appears incidentally without any spoken dialogue and is detached from any sense of reality. Fenson’s mother later gives the Malay woman her ‘first big break’ as a Chinese opera singer at an event she is organizing for the traditional Chinese ‘hungry ghost’ festival, a move that does not serve to disrupt audience expectations about what people from different races can do, but instead portrays a 128 K.P. Tan gesture of Chinese benevolence that appeals to a racial fantasy of inherent cultural and moral superiority, a superiority that can civilize the Other by ‘re-culturalizing’ or ‘renaming’ it. In fact, the Malay woman goes completely unnamed throughout the film and Fenson realizes at one point, ‘I don’t know her name. I just know her as the Fat Lady.’ The Fat Lady only becomes visible through the spectacle of adopting the culture of the racial majority. Her voice is legitimized only when it is the voice of the Chinese majority. Two other peripheral characters are Ahmad (Alias Kadir) and Muthiah (Mohan Sachden), a Malay and Indian male duo whose function is almost entirely to provide comic relief. Ahmad also happens to be a very common Malay name that is still sometimes used to refer to a chauffeur. Both men are overweight and buffoonish in their speech and behaviour, babbling on unintelligently about the day’s events. Their only contribution to the plot is an illegal act: through an error, they come to learn of a ‘super secret’ inspection exercise conducted by the hawker authority and immediately proceed to warn the Wongs and the Chans. Discovering that the secret information has been leaked, a Chinese television reporter interrogates Ahmad and Muthiah who deny everything. Their denial is filmed by a camera angled to look down on them and to capture them as whimpering idiots trying to deceive their way out of a mess that they got themselves into. In a later scene, Ahmad and Muthiah speak directly to the audience about how they will support both the Wongs and the Chans because both are their friends. The Malay and Indian minority are here seen to be cheering from the sidelines of the film’s narrative. They comically regurgitate such national slogans as ‘Singapore is home’ where all races can ‘enjoy’; and then burst into the well-known patriotic song ‘One People, One Nation, One Singapore’. From a position of marginality, the clownish Malay and Indian characters cheer on the endeavours of the Chinese protagonists who dominate the national mainstream, their support expressed in simple-minded slogans and song, ironically about national unity and identity. The Eurasians are represented in the film as cool and good-looking, but superficial, unintelligent, violent, and even sexually perverse. Audrey’s obsequious sidekick Cheryl Bryle (Jo Jo Struys) does not have a mind of her own but mimics Audrey’s seductive and sophisticated ways. Audrey’s Eurasian boyfriend Nick Carter (Randall Tan) lacks the talent – in fact, cannot even remember the lines – to act the part of Romeo in the university production and so Fenson is given the lead role instead. Out of jealousy, Nick punches Fenson in the face for kissing Audrey even though the scene calls for it. Audrey comes to Fenson’s defence and tells Nick that he is ‘too stupid to know what love is’, words that Cheryl echoes sycophanti- cally. Nick embodies the stereotype of violent and hot-headed Eurasian males who are more physical than cerebral. A third Eurasian character is Fenson’s best friend Leon Deli (Kevin Murphy) whose homosexuality is very gradually revealed through homo-erotic exchanges with an unsuspecting Fenson. Leon turns out to be a stalker of Thai MTV Video Jockey Utt (Uttsada Panichkul) who describes him as a ‘psycho’. These stereotypes of superficiality, stupidity, violence, sexi- ness, and perversion may be associated with a chauvinistic view from the Chinese mainstream of Eurasians as the biologically and culturally impure – or corrupted Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 129 and barbaric – offspring of (promiscuously) mixed parentage, their very appearance an embodied mark of the Western influences that have been described in the anti-‘yellow culture’ campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s and the ‘Asian values’ debates in the 1980s and 1990s as degenerate. Indeed, the Eurasian characters in the film function as negative influences on Audrey who turns out to be a much nicer and more sincere person once she decides to leave them behind and go out with Fenson:

I never thought I would get along with a Chinese boy. All my close friends are either Caucasians or Eurasians … I’m sick of going out with these stupid arse-holes who treat me bad. I’m tired of these models who are brainless and selfish.

The privileged audience of Chicken Rice War consists of Chinese Singaporeans, for whom the Indian and Malay characters serve as objects of condescension and ridicule, and by whom the Westernized Eurasian characters are seen as corrupting agents. However, it is more specifically the English-speaking, Westernized Chinese audience who is privileged over their Chinese (dialect)-speaking counterparts: the Westernized characters with whom they identify are presented as stylish, cultured, and sophisticated while the Chinese-speaking characters are portrayed as tacky, ignorant, and uncouth. Audrey, for instance, is impressed by Fenson’s ability to appreciate Shakespeare and romance, unlike other Chinese boys who are ‘geeky … [and] such squares, into their Math and Science’. This motif is most clearly developed in a scene where Fenson’s and Audrey’s Chinese-educated families attend the ‘experimental’ performance of Romeo and Juliet staged at a public car park. They come inappropriately dressed: for example, one wears a badly tailored tuxedo and another a ‘designer’ shirt covered with large clips. The rival hawkers, unable to appreciate the performance, very quickly get distracted by their all-consuming business rivalry that turns into a quarrel and then a brawl. The performance is rudely disrupted, and the privileged middle-class audience of Chicken Rice War is reminded of the futility of policies that seek to turn Singapore into a ‘Renaissance City’ with a gracious society and vibrant arts scene (Singapore Ministry of Information and the Arts 2000; Tan 2007). The senselessness of interfamilial violence is itself meant to reflect the ‘uncivilized’ outlook of the older-generation, Chinese-speaking members of both families, while the rationality and youthful romance of the Westernized position provides the hope for peace and civility. Through distinctive practices of racial coding, the Westernized Chinese protagonists – with whom the Westernized Chinese audience may identify – are situated in a superior position between the crudeness of the Chinese-educated community and the biological and cultural degeneracy of the Eurasians.

Money No Enough (1998) Whilst Chicken Rice War’s privileged audience is quite clearly the Westernized Chinese, Singapore’s most commercially successful film to date, Money No 130 K.P. Tan Enough, seeks to gratify a Chinese-speaking, Chinese-educated audience. The film’s working-class, Chinese-educated protagonists – office worker Chew (Jack Neo), building contractor Ong (Mark Lee), and coffee-shop assistant Hui (Henry Thia) – are friends who live beyond their means. When crisis strikes and they are out of a job, they find themselves systematically disadvantaged in a Westernized society that privileges proficiency in the English language, computer skills, and (overseas) university qualifications. However, with perseverance, entrepreneurial spirit, and a stroke of good luck, the three friends overcome the obstacles and succeed in setting up a viable business of their own. The general message sent to members of the Chinese-speaking community, therefore, is that they too can overcome the structural disadvantages that they face in Westernized Singapore, and therein perhaps lies the main appeal of the film. But the film also gratifies its privileged audience by negatively stereotyping its antagonists, in this case, the Westernized Chinese. Chew has been a loyal worker in All Lee Enterprise for ten years, and is up for a promotion to department manager. But the company has a new employee, Jeremiah Adolpher Lee (Ernest Seah), a young Chinese Singaporean with an overseas education. His deliberately pretentious name immediately distinguishes him from the rest of the Mandarin-speaking local staff, and in fact he admits proudly that he cannot communicate in Mandarin since he has been away for so long. Much to everyone’s surprise, Lee instead of Chew is offered the appointment as department manager, and in this new capacity, he starts to bully the non-English-educated staff – especially Chew, whose poor English-language skills become the target of much ridicule. The audience is made to sympathize with Chew the underdog and to hate the pompous Lee who is also portrayed as effeminate and possibly homosexual. After being publicly insulted for his poor spelling, Chew accuses the campy and flamboyant Lee of colluding with his effeminate boss (Lee Weng Kee) to secure his position in the company, insinuating that both are in a gay relationship. In a dream sequence later, Chew is seduced by Lee dressed in drag and agrees to apologize for his outburst in the office. Just then, his boss appears – also in heavy make-up – welcoming to ‘the family’ Chew, whose nails have suddenly become long and painted. At this point, Chew wakes up from his dream, has sex with his wife who has been anxious to have a baby, and then resigns from his job the next day in order to preserve his dignity (and manhood). In this scene, the Westernized Lee is stereotyped as a transvestite, his Chinese-speaking boss who betrays his own culture is stereotyped as an effete homosexual, and the Chinese-educated Chew who is about to sacrifice his dignity for his job nearly becomes a transvestite. Sexual perversion signals cultural perversion. Conservative proponents of ‘Asian values’ would not regard effeminacy, transvestism, and homosexuality in a positive or even in a neutral light, but instead as an unnatural, degenerate, and immoral condition. Lee’s effeminacy and homosexual orientation, meant to be feared and ridiculed in the film, signal a loss of Chinese identity through an imitation of ‘the West’ – where the West is seen as a degenerate culture and a bad influence. The film also appeals to the privileged Chinese-speaking, Chinese-educated audience by using non-Chinese minority characters to shame the Westernized Chinese antagonists. Lee’s inability to speak Mandarin is made to look especially Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 131 shameful when Chew calls upon Ali (not credited), one of his Malay colleagues, to recite the first two lines of Singapore’s National Pledge in Mandarin. The idea that non-Chinese people will choose to speak Mandarin – or in the case of Chicken Rice War, that a Malay woman would choose to express herself (and become successful in life) through Chinese opera – feeds into a racial fantasy of cultural superiority and assimilation of minorities into that superior culture. Writing about language and empire, David Spurr explains how ‘the colonized … are denied speech in a double sense, first in the idiomatic sense of not being allowed to speak, and second in the more radical sense of not being recognized as capable of speech’ (quoted in Shohat and Stam 1994: 192). In Money No Enough, Ali only speaks when told to and his pronunciation is terrible. Everyone in the office applauds his comical effort, but Ali is nothing more than a buffoon inserted for comic relief. And yet here is a buffoon whose basic command of Mandarin makes the Westernized Lee an even more disgraceful figure. The presence of Indian stereotypes in the film is also calculated to draw quick laughs. In one scene, a Chinese family rushes to the hospital when they learn of their mother’s critical illness. In a state of confusion, they gather around a patient lying on a stretcher and pull back the blanket only to reveal the body of an Indian man with a large moustache. In another scene, Chew tells Jeremiah Lee that All Lee Enterprise hires only people with ‘Lee’ in their names. Even the Sikh man, explains Chew, is a ‘ManggaLEE’ (a mispronounced term referring to Bengali). But while the film makes fun of the Westernized Chinese antagonists in a mean- spiritedly way and presents minority race characters as objects of careless ridicule, it also criticizes the Chinese-educated, mainly Hokkien-speaking protagonists for being crass, self-centred, materialistic, and money-minded yet poor at managing their finances. However, unlike the other racial stereotypes that remain static throughout the film and function in a peripheral way in relation to the narrative, these Chinese-speaking characters are the protagonists and, as active subjects, are allowed to develop over the course of the narrative into better people – in fact, they are the winners at the end of the day.

An ideal-typology of stereotypes There are at least two senses in which racial stereotypes have been thought of as ‘negative’: an ‘epistemological’ sense and a ‘normative’ sense. Epistemologically speaking, stereotypes have been deemed negative because they are misleading and deceptive; because they are distortionary reflections of concrete social reality; or because they are quite simply ‘false’ depictions of most members of the community to which they refer. Although they problematize the essentialist assumption of ‘truth’ behind much critical work on epistemologically false stereotypes, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam nevertheless argue that ‘there are still contingent, qualified, perspectival truths in which communities are invested’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 179). ‘Films which represent marginalized cultures in a realistic mode’, they assert, ‘implicitly make factual claims’ (ibid.). This is the epistemological sense of true/false that I will use for the purposes of this essay, agreeing with Shohat and 132 K.P. Tan Stam that ‘truth’ and ‘representation’ are ultimately not discrete things related in a straightforwardly causal way. In practice, therefore, stereotypical representations of a minority community may diverge from what the community and others may understand or wish to be the ‘truth’ of that community (what Shohat and Stam describe as the ‘“sense of the real” rooted in their own experience’ [ibid.: 182]); and hence such representations are false. And similarly, epistemologically true stereotypes converge with what is understood or wished to be the ‘truth’ of that community or of most of its members. Most important for this essay, epistemologically false stereotypes are those that mimic false knowledges of social life that conceal hidden relations of power and forms of repression; and epistemologically true stereotypes are those that point to these obscured realities. Normatively speaking, stereotypes have been deemed negative because they present a minority community in terms of characteristics that are generally regarded as undesirable. Positive stereotypes, in this normative sense, present the community in terms that are generally regarded as valuable and desirable. The obvious problem with this distinction is that it simplifies the relative nature of values. The positive stereotypes, as Shohat and Stam (1994: 203) assert, are ‘positive for whom?’ In the very likely case that this is effectively the value system of the dominant majority (imposed upon the minorities or adopted uncritically or strategically by them), a ‘desirable’ stereotype ostensibly aimed at ‘desirable’ transformations may in effect be serving to transform the minorities into the image of the majority (for example, the Fat Lady in Chicken Rice War); or – worse – into its pale shadow (for example, Ali in Money No Enough). Angeline Khoo and Lim Kam Ming (2004), for example, point out that the Chinese may consider their own dominant stereotype of being kiasu (Hokkien for ‘afraid to lose’) to be a positive trait that all Singaporeans would do well to emulate; while Malays and Indians may originally have seen this not as healthy competitiveness that is good for the national economy, but as greed that is bad for the soul and over-cautiousness that might even be bad for the economy. The question ‘positive (or negative) for whom?’ may be answered by critically considering an individual’s ‘true needs’ which may be understood through a critique of the individual’s ideological horizons, motivations, and resources in hegemonic struggles over meaning, value, and power. Stereotypes, therefore, have been discussed in terms of at least four ideal- types: false-undesirable, true-undesirable, true-desirable, and false-desirable (see Table 7.1). False-undesirable racial stereotypes are likely to be part of a system that marginalizes the minorities, their ‘good’ qualities redefined as negative by the overwhelming standards of a dominant class or submerged by mostly false negative images that the minorities themselves may be forced to accept and from which they find it difficult to escape. When such stereotypes are put to ideological work, they become a part of the national-popular consciousness that sustains latent and asymmetrical power relations. In fact, the more powerful the ideological work, the more likely it is that these false stereotypes will become self-fulfilling and eventually ‘true’ in the active, consensual sense of an integral hegemony (Gramsci 1971); but they remain epistemologically false for the way they refer only to the surface realities that obscure true interests. False-undesirable stereotypes, therefore, have Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 133

Table 7.1 Racial stereotypes: four ideal-types False True Stereotypes (negative) (positive)

Undesirable Subjugation Critical self-reflection for (negative) positive transformation Desirable Invention of a new Role models for community (positive) community uplift instrumental value for hegemonic practices of subjugation. When there is general agreement on values and goals, true-undesirable racial stereotypes have been used to call attention to a minority community’s less desirable qualities that need to be overcome and those qualities that it believes to be lacking in its members. Such stereotypes are employed (often by leaders of minority communities themselves) to force the community to confront, instead of avoid, the challenges of what they perceive as their concrete social reality, regardless of how awkward or uncomfortable this may seem. An approach like this – realistic, upfront, tough, and even rude – can spur a community to rally together in an effort to identify its true interests and work through strategies of effecting positive transformations that are defined by the community. True-undesirable stereotypes, therefore, have instrumental value for the task of critical self-reflection that leads to transformative action. True-desirable stereotypes can serve as positive role models for a minority community sensitized to the way in which its most distinguished members have made it possible for their community to be worthy of everyone else’s esteem. Society itself may come to realize the error of its deep-seated prejudices when true-desirable stereotypes unexpectedly and more frequently foreground the positive qualities of the minorities and the respectable personalities associated with them. True-desirable stereotypes, therefore, have instrumental value for the way they highlight the positive aspects of a minority community to inspire the rest of that community and to correct the prejudiced views of others. However, in the absence of such positive qualities and personalities in the community on which true-desirable stereotypes may be modelled, false-desirable stereotypes may be required to start a virtuous cycle by distorting and denying an undesirable reality, generating positive fictions, and inventing role models as an example and source of inspiration for depressed communities to uplift themselves and be regarded by other communities with greater respect. In other words, coun- terfactually positive racial stereotypes can provide the minorities with an imaginary glimpse of alternative realms of possibility as a goal to strive for. False-desirable stereotypes, therefore, have instrumental value for a minority community that seeks to reinvent itself. While false-undesirable stereotypes often lend themselves to practices of domination and subjugation, an over-emphasis on false-desirable and true-desirable stereotypes may have the effect of whitewashing the really existing problems that the minorities and the larger society to which they belong must face and deal with. 134 K.P. Tan Building up hope and feeling inspired by this may not be enough to overcome real structural difficulties; or worse, can distract the hopeful from the latent issues of power and exploitation that may be the real causes of their problems. Films that adopt such stereotypes may provide gratification, example, and hope to the disadvantaged; and yet at the same time mask the real structural inequalities that a more radically critical film may highlight for public debate. They can provide audiences with an uncritical escape into fantasy, dumb-down their critical faculties, and limit their critical vocabulary. Audiences, in this way, become more immune to injustices in society.

Using stereotypes critically It is often in the commercial interest of the culture industry to sell its mainstream film audiences fantasies of superiority and of escape – fantasies that are often popu- lated with gratifying stereotypes. As long as ‘political correctness’ continues to be ridiculed as an unreasonable, petty, and dogmatic movement, racial stereotypes will go on being palatable to people who nostalgically look back to the ‘good old days’ of common sense when, they like to imagine, no one cared about calling others or being called by others what are today regarded as derogatory names. As a powerful hegemonic organ in the culture industry, mainstream commercial films (much more than independent films) often function to naturalize relations of dominance. In doing this, they need to obscure the commercial conditions of their own cultural production, exchange, and consumption, disguising the political interests and motivations that go into their construction through mimetic portrayals of superficial realities that hide contradictions, tensions, exploitations, and injustices. But films do more than mimic concrete reality; they become continuous with it, their images flowing continuously and sometimes indistinguishably into and out of it. Today’s ‘reality’, it might in fact be argued, is a ‘hyperreality’ where images – more ‘real’ than ‘reality’ – are circulated and re-circulated by the global capitalist mass media (for example, Baudrillard 1994). Stereotypical images – whether positive or negative – also circulate in late-capitalist Singapore to simulate race differences, hierarchies, and relations in terms of ‘multiracialism’. However, accepting the hyperreality of mass-mediated images and stereotypes does not necessarily have to lead to the abandonment of a progressive politics. The conditions of hyperreality may themselves be pressed into the service of a critical approach to producing and reading popular culture. For example, the mass appeal of commercial films (which often owes much to the indiscriminate use of racial stereotypes) can help to secure large enough audiences for radical public education. Once the mass audience is captured, stereotypes can be actively employed in their own dismantling, all in the interest of transforming Singapore society into a less ignorant and more critically self-reflective and openly deliberative community in which racial differences are understood to be complex and appreciated as a sign of vibrancy and maturity, not a mark of threat to be crudely repressed through shallow ridicule. By employing true-undesirable stereotypes, films can highlight real issues and Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 135 problems faced by racial minorities; and the use of desirable stereotypes presents possible, though certainly contestable, trajectories for positive transformations. Films can – but only as a starting point – also adopt false-undesirable stereotypes that are instantly resonant and gratifying to their target audience. But the films should not stop there. All these stereotypes – and in particular the false-undesirable kind – should, in the course of the film, be developed in ways that problematize a simplistic, homogeneous, and static understanding of race, race relations, and community improvement. Familiar characters with which audiences can initially connect should quickly evolve into more complex entities as the film unfolds, revealing diversity, slipperiness, and dynamism that more properly reflect or refract the ‘real’, often incoherent, world. More dynamic and problematic characterizations should aim to challenge the taken-for-granted knowledge of social conditions. Such characterizations should play on the internal contradictions and untenable one-dimensionality of stereotypical characters so that they collapse under their own weight. One aim could be to attract a large audience and then make them ashamed of their simplistic prejudices in order to provoke them into reflecting on the inadequacy of thinking about their worlds in such limited terms. A second and quite related aim could be to provoke, through such problematic films, public debate on difficult race-related issues – but to do this with greater sensitivity, empathy, care, and imagination. One example of a film that begins to use racial stereotypes in this critical way is TalkingCock The Movie. It hilariously portrays a range of stereotyped characters linked together in a campy narrative that is loosely structured and non-naturalistic; and through these recognizably Singaporean types, the film connects with a mass audience. Most significantly, the stereotypes are very obviously presented in ‘quotation marks’: they are, through deliberately exaggerated gestures and styl- ized references, ‘de-naturalized’ in such a way as to discourage audiences from reading them as racist expressions that aim to ridicule and derogate the racial minorities or as accurate portrayals (in fact an integral part) of their social reality. If anything, the film draws (critical) attention to the taken-for-granted ways in which audiences think of themselves and others. Critical distance is set between these stereotypes and the social reality to which they refer. In the process, audiences learn to read these types of film through an enlarged vocabulary of images, figures, and non-literal devices. Similar to this are the well-known subversive strategies of ‘mimicry’ theorized and enacted by contemporary French feminists like Luce Irigaray. As Elizabeth Grosz explains:

Irigaray shares the hysteric’s excessive mimicry, the conversion of her passiv- ity into activity by taking on, in the most extreme forms, what is expected, but to such an extreme degree that the end result is the opposite of compliance: it unsettles the system by throwing back to it what it cannot accept about its own operations. […] Unlike the hysteric, however, Irigaray’s strategy is self-consciously undertaken and does not or need not reproduce the ultimately self-destructive and self-defeating debilitation of hysteria. (Grosz 1989: 138) 136 K.P. Tan TalkingCock The Movie (2002) Loosely based on a highly successful website that publishes satirical articles – daring by Singapore standards – TalkingCock The Movie is composed of silly skits linked together in a free-flowing, Monty Python-esque fashion. Unlike the more naturalistic style of Chicken Rice War and Money No Enough, a style that imitates and therefore reinforces superficial social realities, TalkingCock de-naturalizes the taken-for-granted character types in Singapore, their social interactions, and the popular cultural styles that represent them, and in that way actually serves to subvert ‘reality’. While stereotypes in Chicken Rice War and Money No Enough are employed in ways that reinforce the view of their privileged audiences, stereotypes in TalkingCock are used in grotesque ways that draw critical attention to themselves; to the limited social understandings that they point to and are derived from; to the unthinking ways in which they are consumed in popular culture; and to the underlying power relations that give rise to them. While the comedic form of Chicken Rice War and Money No Enough relies on a taken-for-granted acceptance of these stereotypes, the comedy in TalkingCock is based largely on stereotypes that make parodic and critical references not only to the subjects, but also to the audience’s expectations as consumers and the formats that have come to dominate popular culture. The use of loosely linked skits as a format also causes the audience’s focus on central characters to be dispersed as no clear protagonists, antagonists, or peripheral characters are discernible. All characters, regardless of their race, are equally important (or unimportant, as the case may be). In this way, TalkingCock would seem to be a more genuinely multiracial film where the subjects are drawn from all the identifiable racial groups, no racial group predominates, and all are stereotyped in a deliberately ridiculous way to draw attention to their constructed nature in the film and in real life. In one skit, for example, several Indian characters perform a Bollywood-style fight and dance sequence which is clearly aimed at being a good-natured parody of the excess, exaggeration, and melodrama of Bollywood cinema. A second example, the ‘Turbanator’ skit, puts a painful twist on a well-known joke played in Singapore: when one Singaporean sees a Sikh, he pinches another person who has to say the colour of the Sikh’s turban before he lets him go. In the skit, the Sikh (Jeff Singh) turns out to be the ‘Turbanator’ (a parodic reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg character ‘The Terminator’) whose mission is to punish those who make ‘awful Sikh jokes … and puns’ by pinching their nipples! While the skit is clearly too ridiculous to be interpreted as an insult to the Sikhs, it does serve to de-naturalize the habitual practice of having fun at their expense, mainly through the spectacle of a hilarious Sikh monster that threatens to exact revenge. To re-emphasize the non-malicious intentions of the film, prominent academic and member of the Sikh community Kirpal Singh is also presented in the film itself telling Sikh jokes and giving an account of a less prickly Singapore in previous times when racially oriented jokes were regarded as ‘ice-breakers’ and were rarely malicious in their intentions. Nevertheless, the filmmakers Woo Yen Yen and Colin Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 137 Goh (2007) still had to work hard to convince the Board of Film Censors that such a scene would not inflame racial sensitivities. In yet another skit, an amateur heavy-metal band made up of one Chinese (Randall Lee) and four Malay (Mohd Leoaidil, Mohammad Yuhan Bin Mohd Yunus, Mohd Faizal Bin Matisa, and Poh Johann Azman) musicians decides to participate in a national band competition. In preparing for the competition, the members encounter all kinds of difficulty and they almost give up in the end. Finally, they realize that to win the competition and go on to become a commercial success, they need to compromise their ‘macho’ musical style and transform themselves into a clean cut ‘boy band’. After all, all the other contestants are heavy- metal clones and, ironically, it is the boy-band style that makes them original. In this skit, the Malays who are usually associated with the mat rocker image (a reference to macho and rebellious groups of Malay males who play and listen to rock music; see Chapter 9) transform themselves into boy-band musicians (clean- cut, cute, and almost androgynous). But is this skit any different from the Fat Lady sub-plot in Chicken Rice War since both are non-naturalistic portrayals? While the Malay lady is only a peripheral and decorative character with no speaking lines, the band comprises Malay and Chinese boys who, as main characters in that skit, gain some self-knowledge in the course of the narrative. While Chinese opera is iconic of traditional Chinese culture, boy-band music is not wholly associated with Chinese pop culture. However, the Fat Lady segment may also be read as a very deliberate de-naturalizing representation of the unspeaking native and subservient female, so ridiculously extreme that audiences are forced to rethink their own relationships with Malay women. The Fat Lady is perhaps the only potentially subversive character in Chicken Rice War. Also prominent in TalkingCock are Hokkien-speaking working-class stereotypes. A lecherous old Chinese man (Ding Chu Hui) strokes the handle of his umbrella as he lusts after a young lady (Judith Tan) at a bus-stop; but he runs away from her in disgust when she reveals to him her long armpit hair. A foul-mouth Professor Lai Piah Chwee (Ronald Leo), whose name in Hokkien means ‘come and fight’, teaches young Singaporeans how to be gangsters at ‘Singapore’s Number 1 Gangster University’ Hoot U, where courses are offered in brothel management and the loan shark business. A Cultural Medallion winner, poet Khong Hai Ku (Terence Koh), is always drunk and vomits wherever he goes, reciting poems with lines like ‘I can’t speak English / At 10, I had to find a job / ‘Cause I flunked school’. Following the advice of his polytechnic-educated son (Lionel Chua Oon Peng), a loan shark (Tan Cheng Han) – or ‘Ah Long’ – decides to upgrade his business into a dot.com to make it ‘more modern, more respectable, and more professional’. His attempts fail, predictably, and he is forced to return to the ‘old economy’ style of business. In the same satirical and irreverent spirit that has made the website so popular, the film uses these stereotypes to poke fun at the often gung-ho public rhetoric surrounding the ‘new economy’ that exhorts all Singaporeans to upgrade their skills and rethink their businesses, or else risk being left behind. The film exposes how such exhortations are unrealistic for many Singaporeans. At the same time, it foregrounds sections of society – in this case, the dialect-speaking 138 K.P. Tan Chinese – for whom much of Singapore’s public discourse would be irrelevant or misunderstood. As with the Hoot U skit, the ‘eAhLong.com’ skit exposes the irrelevance to a large section of Singapore society of public discourse on educational qualifications and skills upgrading for the new economy. The absurd consequences of taking the discourse seriously and too literally become material for some very effective comedy that in turn highlights the marginalized position of dialect-speakers in a country like Singapore. The film also makes a hilarious suggestion that Singapore is actually secretly controlled by a corporation run by ‘aunties’, or middle-aged women who can be found in society serving as office tea- ladies, public toilet attendants, and hawkers. The suggestion draws from popular stereotypes of the auntie, but also draws attention to the way that they are often ignored or treated rudely by society. One of the film’s taglines is that ‘TalkingCock The Movie is dedicated to Singaporeans who dare to be themselves’. The film ostensibly makes a virtue of its Singlish dialogue as a reflection of ‘authentic’ Singapore life. The talents behind the website also published a best-selling book in 2002 facetiously titled The Coxford Singlish Dictionary. While it might seem as if the film’s mimicry of authentic everyday-life speech is itself a straightforward act of defiance against a government that regularly promotes the use of ‘good English’ for its international economic value, it could also be argued that the exaggerated versions of Singlish in the film are presented in ‘quotation marks’ to draw attention to their community- marking artifice and to the fact that most Singaporeans are more than capable of code-switching from one register to another according to the circumstances. In this sense, the film celebrates the plasticity of Singlish rather than a ‘romanticized’ authenticity; and it certainly mocks official attempts to control it. The film, through absurd gestures, calls attention to its own constructedness. It de-naturalizes itself by foregrounding its ‘commercial’ basis. While Samsung products are integrated into the film, the filmmakers at the same time attempt to parody commercialism itself (and their own resort to commercial sponsors) by ‘shamelessly’ featuring fictitious ‘Auntie Auntie’ brand products throughout the narrative as mock-advertisements. The film also makes fun of itself and, through a deliberately self-deprecating gesture, critiques Singaporeans who instantly regard local films as second-rate. In one of the earlier skits, three office workers come together to ‘talk cock’:

– Eh tonight, hah, got this new movie. Want to go and see or not? – What is it? – Some new local movie – comedy one. – Comedy? Your sense of humour so cock! You still want to recommend! – Go lah. Like Singapore got anything to do one. – Some more, all local movies damn condemned! – Hey, don’t like that lah. Must support a bit a bit, mah. At least see how bad the movie is. Like that also quite fun what! – Don’t say I say ah, but I think ah, if I shoot ah, also better. – Then go and shoot one yourself lah. Talk so big! Racial stereotypes in Singapore films 139 Conclusion In the last decade or so, Singapore’s determined entry into the global capitalist economy and enthusiastic participation in neoliberal capitalism have secured greater opportunities for the film industry to grow and find an international audience for its products, most spectacularly under the rubric of the Renaissance City. Made-in-Singapore films like Money No Enough, Chicken Rice War, and TalkingCock The Movie have, to a significant degree, been possible as a result of these economic opportunities. Today, Raintree Pictures (which produced Chicken Rice War) has secured a clearly dominant role in Singapore cinema’s efforts to penetrate more widely international markets, aiming to produce ‘“borderless” movies for the international viewer’ (MediaCorp Raintree Pictures 2007). Many of these more commercially oriented Singapore films continue to use racial stereotypes as a means of marking out what the editors of this volume have called ‘millennial multiculturalism’, since these stereotypes are a convenient resource for commercially repackaging multiracialism as glossy filmic exotica for the consumption of a fascinated international audience. Most of these commercial films also demonstrate how Singapore’s neoliberal multiculturalism has not been disarticulated from the racial governmentality of postcolonial multiculturalism. These films reinforce the CMIO model, are ani- mated by stereotypical notions of race, and position strongly racialized characters in a static hierarchy of value that aims to gratify obviously privileged audiences. By dramatically taming these racial stereotypes, films that depict multiracialism in this way give audiences – still paranoid about racial otherness – a pleasurable multicultural fantasy to which they can escape from a nation they have learnt to think of as inherently vulnerable and a civilized world that the global media has portrayed as terrorized. In Renaissance Singapore, racial differences – categorized and neutralized – are celebrated as a sign of social and cultural vibrancy, a celebration that loudly ignores real socioeconomic issues and problems. This essay has attempted to critique the commercialization of racial governmentality in films that tame racial differences and re-deploy racial stereotypes to gratify audiences. Through a reading of TalkingCock The Movie, the essay has also suggested a critical approach to multiculturalism that enables a more complex engagement with cultural difference in Singapore. Such an approach does not simply ignore the existing repertoire of stereotypes, replacing them with more complex, hybrid, subversive, and progressive representations. Approaches that argue against epistemologically and normatively negative stereotypes in favour of straightforwardly positive ones may not be the most effective means of resist- ing popular beliefs about racial hierarchies and practices of racial discrimination. Simply by de-privileging the Chinese-speaking protagonists and treating the minority-race characters with more dignity and importance in a film like Money No Enough will not peel off the thick mimetic layers of false-undesirable images that have hegemonically ‘become true’ even for minority audiences. Adopting positive stereotypes, particularly false-desirable ones, is also unlikely to present audiences with a lens to convincingly see their world in a different light. In fact, 140 K.P. Tan positive stereotypes, like the most vacuously celebratory images of Renaissance City multiculturalism, may actually serve to further conceal contradictions, tensions, oppressions, and repressions. Instead, this essay has called for a direct engagement with these existing stereotypes, but in creatively ironic and parodic ways that de-naturalize them and make shamefully visible the hypocrisies, irrationalities, and contradictions of the neoliberal multiculturalism that supports them. In particular, this essay has suggested that filmmakers directly engage stereotypes in more critical ways, using them creatively to contain within quotation marks the racist ideas, practices, and representations in society and culture. TalkingCock The Movie manages to use racial stereotypes in such strategically grotesque ways that audiences are led to re-encounter the ‘racism’ in the film and ‘work through’ their own racist views and practices as somehow strange and perhaps even regrettable.

Films cited Chicken Rice War (2000), directed and written by Chee Kong Cheah, produced by Daniel Yun, Suat Yen Lim and David Leong, distributed by Alliance Entertainment Singapore. Money No Enough (1998), written by Jack Neo, directed by Tay Teck Lock, produced by Hsiao Yu-Hua and J.P. Tan, distributed by Alliance Entertainment Singapore. TalkingCock The Movie (2002), written by Colin Goh, directed and produced by Joycelyn Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh, produced by Hian Goh and Lim Jen Howe, distributed by Alliance Entertainment Singapore. 8 The Singapore Indian woman A symptom in the quest for Chinese identity

Matilda Gabrielpillai

Invisibility and the Singapore Indian woman In Chong Tze Chien’s 1998 play-within-a-play, Pan-Island Expressway, a playwright casts two local Chinese actors, one male and one female, in the roles of two Indian labourers arguing on a safety island on an expressway. Interrogated on his decision, he glibly justifies it by citing race and gender as social constructions. By casting inappropriate bodies as Indian workers in the Singapore landscape, the Chinese playwright, James Chia, hopes to ‘break down the urban myths surrounding race and gender’ and expose the ‘contrived’ nature of these identities (Chong 2002: 53). I become uneasy. Though academically trained to critically regard race and gender as fictions, to disregard bio-essentialisms, a voice within me rebels: But what about my Indian female body? If a Chinese male body can stand in for my Indian femininity, then where do I become visible and assert my presence? Black masks, white skins, I retort – this is the new colonialism, a local version of the ‘blackface’ act, a Chinese minstrel show that commodifies and consumes my racial Otherness, turning it into a fetish (Low 1996). Almost vindicated, I note that for all the fictional playwright’s lofty intentions of transcending ‘skin colour’ in order to reach for the ‘humanity, the common thread binding us all together’ (Chong 2002: 53), with which surely I must identify, he still requires his actors to put on Indian costume, marking the very skin colour he wants to dispel as racial boundary (ibid.: 50). Pan-Island Expressway brings me to an awareness of contradictions in my desires concerning race and gender identifications and representations, a consciousness of being caught in between two cultural temporalities. On the one hand, I realize that Chong is exploring inter-cultural spaces, the possibility of taking on cosmopolitan transethnic and even transnational identities. The Singapore depicted in his play belongs to a globalizing, post-modern world, which offers the development of new complex hybridized subjectivities that promise new freedoms and a new politics of transethnic, transnational alliances against social injustices. Yet, there is also another way of reading the scene, as the literal erasure of Indian subjectivity by a colonizing Chinese one. An examination of local media and literary representations reveals that the Singapore Indian woman is either invisible, or overly visible as a perverse anti- 142 M. Gabrielpillai social element, in the English-language media. Television dramas about local life or history are often bereft of Indian participation. When the Indian woman does appear on television, she is large and unattractive and/or talks too much. It is fairly common to find newspaper reports claiming to be about ‘Asian beauties’ featuring a slew of Chinese faces. This resonates with Evelyn M. Hammonds’ (1997: 170) account of constructions of black female sexuality in America where ‘black women’s sexuality … constructed in a binary opposition to that of white women … is rendered simultaneously invisible, visible (exposed), hypervisible, and patholo- gized in dominant discourses’. Neither is the local Indian woman present as writer or literary character in the contemporary post-colonial literary scene. Though she had been prominent in the first post-independence wave of writing, she lost out to Chinese women writers from the mid-1980s onwards, when the emphasis on Singapore’s Chinese ‘Confucianist’ culture sponsored a wave of women’s novels that explored local women’s national history from an exclusively Chinese perspective. Borrowing from Hortense Spillers’ famous quote, local Indian women are beginning to look like the ‘beached whales of the [local] sexual universe, unvoiced, mis-seen, not doing, and awaiting their verb’ (quoted in Hammonds 1997: 171). It is not the purpose of this paper to argue for the greater visibility of Indian women as ‘racial’ subjects in the local English-language media. Rather, taking a cue from my own discomfort at the erasure of the local Indian woman in a contemporary time that emphasises interculturalities and new identities beyond race, I would like to ask whether the question of the representation of the Indian woman qua ‘Indian woman’ has now become irrelevant in the new sociocultural temporality; or to put it in another way, what is the local Indian woman’s place in the imagining of new local identities? Have the previous racialisms and racisms instituted by the state’s CMIO cultural and education policies simply disappeared into thin air in the era of transnational identities, or have they entered into and structured local reception of global multiculturalisms and cosmopolitanisms funded by the transnational flows of capital and labour? These are overly large questions that I can only begin to address in some aspects. This paper focuses on examining three local English-language texts – two novels and a television sitcom – that feature the local Indian woman in quest of inter-ethnic interculturalisms. Taking a psychoanalytical approach, it will read the unconscious of these texts in terms of their cultural agenda and investigate the intersubjective dynamics that take place between Indian female characters and those of the majority community (Wright 1998; Benjamin 1998). Using Jessica Benjamin’s inter-psychic model of the ideal ‘non-identical’ or ‘doubly-identified selfhood’ (1998: 107) that would allow one to use identification with the racial other to bridge difference, to toler- ate non-identity rather than wipe out the position of self or other, it will consider whether, in inter-ethnic relations, the Singapore subject can hold the negation of the other in an idyllic tension with its recognition of the other. As Benjamin notes, a doubly-identified selfhood would involve transcending narcissistic egoism, where one recognizes the position of the other without abandoning one’s own position (ibid.). Such a psychoanalytical approach may prove fruitful in offering a way to critically scrutinize the imagining of intercultural identities in Singapore. The Singapore Indian woman 143 Reading the novel A Fistful of Colours by Christine Lim Suchen, a text that attempts to interrogate the state’s racialization of local Chinese identity, I will suggest the psychic difficulty of imagining new multicultural inter-ethnic spaces posed by a remembered psychic history of the state’s hegemonizing of distinct racial identities. The paper will show that the novel’s quest for multicultural inter- ethnic space does psychological battle with the injunction to racially identify, and ends with racial polarization, the quick putting up of racial fences. First published in 1993 and re-issued in 2003 in a special series, the novel shows that Lim remains entrapped in the conceptual contradictions inherent in the dominant representation of the nation’s multiculturalism as a ‘mosaic’ of separate racial/ethnic spheres which also overlap in a ‘common space’ to form an essentialized national ‘Asian’ identity of shared values. Lim’s quest for ethnic identity still framed within the CMIO paradigm, colours her imagining of common inter-ethnic spaces such that these cannot generate anything other than anxious representations of the difference of ethnic Others. But if Lim’s novel appeared during the period when the state was still heavily investing in its CMIO racialization project, ten years later, despite a state-sponsored discourse of cosmopolitan pluralisms (Yaacob 2003), and in a time of the nation’s heavy reliance on international labour and capital, local media texts in English are still unable to surmount CMIO racialisms. Examining an award-winning episode of Achar! (Cheng and Ha 2003), a local television sitcom series, this paper will argue that the logic of local racial politics may articulate with that of Chinese and Indian transnational identities (Ong 1999; Grewal 2005) resulting from neoliberal circulations of capital, producing localized neoliberal multiculturalisms where race is deployed to elide class antagonisms both within and across ethnic communities (Hale 2002, 2005; Postero 2006). Although Achar!, a series on an inter-ethnic marriage between a Chinese woman and an Indian man, may be seen as a response to a recent trend in such inter-ethnic marriages in Singapore, interesting slippages occur in this Bollywoodized depiction of Indian culture. Whereas Indian culture in Singapore is dominantly viewed as Hindu Tamil or South Indian, the culture represented here is from the wealthier North Indian region, from which hail a significant portion of Indian foreign talent working in Singapore. The Indian male lead, Jas Arora, too, is a fair-skinned Bollywood import, visually unlike the darker local South Indians who are marrying local Chinese women. But if the show taps into a glamourized upper-class ‘cosmopolitan’ Indian culture making its way on the global stage, it nevertheless remains structured by the same racial fears and stereotypes that have long expressed class antagonisms towards local minorities. In both Achar! and Lim’s novel, the Indian woman is not a well-developed, consistent or ‘real’ character but is rather a phantasmic projection of the Chinese self. As a fantasy boundary figure, she reveals and bears on her body, through processes of racist abjection and narcissism, the Chinese subject’s conscious and repressed/ disavowed anxieties concerning his/her own racial/ethnic and sexual identities. The parallels between the negative coding in Singapore’s postcolonial context of a local minority female sexuality and that observed in colonial representations of black women in late nineteenth-century European art and literature are very disturbing 144 M. Gabrielpillai in their suggestion of a racialized class politics (Gilman 1985). But this is not a matter only of racist ethnography of the Other. The deficient representation of local Indian women symptomizes anomalies and hindrances in the formation of Chinese subjectivities also arising from the state’s racial governmentality. But rather than end on a negative note, this paper will examine Fiona Cheong’s novel Shadow Theatre (2002) as gesturing towards new ways of imagining Indian female and other subjectivities as inter-ethnic and hybrid. I will suggest that it is not surprising that the only text of the three explored here that complicates and disrupts racial identifications by mining the interstices of the CMIO paradigm for multiple ethnic and inter-ethnic identifications and transethnic subjectivities informed by factors such as class, age, nationality, gender and sexuality has been imagined by a woman of Singapore origins who grew up here but who now lives and works elsewhere, in the United States of America. Having escaped interpellation by local state discourse from the 1980s, Cheong is able to tap into an earlier era of local hybrid cultures made possible perhaps by a history of pre-colonial interculturalisms, Singapore’s immersion in Malayan colonial culture, the movements of people and cultures between the metropolis and the periphery and the experience of World War II, as well as by the then newly independent state’s pursuance of an intercultural nationalism. If her novel offers a strangely dislocated ‘back to the future’ feeling, it may be a signal that just such cultural remembering of our dissonant pasts is needed to re-write our scripts of empowering and socially just local cosmopolitanisms.

Christine Lim Suchen’s novel Fistful of Colours: abjecting the racial other In Christine Lim’s 1992 Singapore Literature Prize-winning novel, a 12-year-old girl, Suwen, abandoned to her grandparents by her mother – who had left Perak to seek fame and fortune as a Cantonese opera star, a fah dan, and good marital prospects – is re-united with her mother, who returns to re-claim her, turning up suddenly in the backwaters of rural Malaysia with her husband-to-be, a scion of a Singapore immigrant tycoon. But if Suwen was hopeful of finally winning maternal love and life in a ‘normal’ two-parent family home, she is soon disappointed. On the trip to Singapore, her mother leaves her alone for many hours in the car at Kuala Jelai, for a sex stop with her husband-to-be. Once in Singapore and set up in the Ong family mansion, Suwen is molested by her now-stepfather and banished to boarding school in Britain when she dares to tell on him. Returning nearly two decades later in her mid-thirties, the protagonist converts her stepfather’s garage into her living quarters, symptomatically being close enough to perpetually antagonize her mother and stepfather but not far enough away to carve out a separate life for herself. Working as a teacher and part-time artist, Suwen rejects the ‘Mandarin’ Chinese cultural pretensions of her parents as hypocritical and inauthentic, and researches the ‘true’ lowly origins of her family’s peasant immigrant history. Seeking to form inter-ethnic relationships, she moves in cosmopolitan circles, forming a close friendship with Nica Sivalingam, a Chinese-Indian woman sculptor The Singapore Indian woman 145 of Straits Chinese and Sri Lankan Tamil heritage, hanging out with Malay jour- nalist Zul Hussein and his Chinese girlfriend Janice, and becoming romantically involved with Mark Campbell, an expatriate Scotsman and colleague. Inspired by her intercultural encounters, she embarks on a quest to aesthetically represent Singapore as a palimpsest of multi-ethnic, even contradictory, histories and identities (Lim 2003). The project does not get completed as Suwen’s art is rejected as pornographic by a prudish local public, and Nica and Mark sexually betray her. With her family home falling apart around her as the Ong family wealth disinte- grates, Suwen leaves everyone behind to board a train to Kuala Jelai, a departure depicted in the novel with all the promise of a new beginning – until we remember that Kuala Jelai was the place of her inaugural abjection. Although Lim is keen to portray her protagonist sympathetically, perhaps even setting her up as heroic by filtering her third-person narration through Suwen’s perspective and judgement, Suwen is unable to fit into the character mould designed for her, nor is she able to command our identification. Given the proximity of Suwen’s and the narrator’s perspectives, in analysing Suwen’s failure to leave behind her racial identifications in exploring new intercultural identities and relationships, one also comes to comprehend the psychic problems that plague the novel’s own quest to depict Singaporean multicultural subjectivities. First, Suwen’s move to pursue intercultural relationships and seek a multicultural local identity that eschews racialisms and racisms is psychically linked to her attempt to abject her parents and everything that they stand for, including state authority. We should bear in mind the similarity between Julia Kristeva’s account of abjection (Kristeva 1982, 1991; Moi 1986; Shimakawa 2002) and Benjamin’s object-relations’ narrative of the path to healthy selfhood (1998). For Benjamin, the healthy ego of the subject is formed, first, through an attempt to assert its omnipotence against its caregiver/parent or Other, and, then, by having that omnipotence destroyed by the caregiver/parent or Other who survives the subject’s onslaught with neither retaliation nor submission. Having thus discovered its own limits, the subject is now ready to recognize the Other’s alterity as an external being outside one’s control but who can nevertheless have an impact on the subject. This facilitates an ‘emergence of feeling for and with the other, forming the foundation for healthy inter-subjective relationships (ibid.: 91). When, however, the subject’s destructiveness has not been survived but has been met with punishment by a ‘moral force’, says Benjamin, the destructiveness is internalized in the subject’s super-ego, forcing the child-subject to either flee the authority of the super-ego or identify with it, with the authority of this unassailable Other, who stands for a dominant cultural and moral order (ibid.). Rejected by her mother at birth and again at Kuala Jelai, and then molested by her stepfather, Suwen performs almost ritualistic acts of abjection through violently painting on any available canvas. In fact, Suwen’s artistic talent, the core of her individuality, is literally found/ed at Kuala Jelai precisely through an abjection. However, it is only on her return home from Britain that Suwen’s abjection of her parents takes on political meaning as she quilts the lie of the family to what she views as the lie of the state-promoted Mandarin Chinese cultural identity. As she researches the seedy peasant origins 146 M. Gabrielpillai of the stepfather in its contradiction of the official discourse of Singapore’s grand pioneering Chinese immigrant founder-fathers, it becomes clear that the super-ego which Suwen has both internalized and which she attempts to abject does not refer only to the stepfather’s moral and cultural patriarchal authority but through him to the patriarchal authority of the state, and the mother who supports both. However, the desiring position of abjection neither allows Suwen to break free from the Ongs and her mother, nor does it permit her to form healthy new relationships. Living on the margins of the Ong family mansion in her garage-apartment, Suwen is Kristeva’s exilic stray, who keeps wanting to forage on excluded or abjected ground, obtaining her jouissance from surrounding herself with the abjected border of her self, electing to live in constant fear of being devoured by that which she has excluded. Looking for new meanings since her abjection of her parents and their trumped-up Chinese identity had drawn her toward ‘the place where meaning collapses’ (Kristeva 1982: 2), Suwen approaches her multicultural circle of friends but is unable to move beyond narcissistic egoism towards the intercultural ideal that Benjamin posits where one is able to identify with the other without, however, assimilating it, recognizing instead the other in its radical alterity (1998: 79–108). Neither Suwen nor the narrator is capable of seeing Nica Sivalingam except as a screen onto which are projected Suwen’s desires to be witty, clever, a consummate artist, and an extraordinary, fearless critic of authority. Nica is a fantasy of Suwen’s desire for bodily control and sexual identity:

Nica had the confidence which she, Suwen, lacked. She had often seen Nica walk down Orchard Road, ever so confident that her lithe dancer’s body [trained through Indian classical dance] was a natural construct built for admiration. She, Suwen, on the other hand, had never felt that way about her body before. Not ever. (Lim 2003: 66)

As the border between self and other blurs, Suwen covets Nica’s ability to transcend racial identifications. But it is only a matter of time before Nica switches from being Suwen’s ‘magnetized pole of covetousness’ (Kristeva 1982: 8) into becoming that which Suwen must abject, expel, if she is to retain her selfhood. Though it is Suwen’s inability to form a relationship with Mark, her self-admitted lifelong habit of rejecting men before they reject her, that sends Mark into Nica’s arms, Suwen (and the narrator through her) loses no time in narcissistically project- ing onto Nica, Kristeva’s description of the perverse abject as ‘one who kills in the name of life – a progressive despot’ who ‘establishes narcissistic power while pretending to reveal the abyss’ (ibid.: 15). Nica is also the perverse abject as the ‘artist who practices [her] art as a “business”’ (ibid.: 16): she masturbates Mark so that she can sculpt ‘an erect male nude’ (Lim 2003: 289–93). Not having survived the battle against her parents’ inauthentic Chineseness, Suwen unconsciously sets the stage for Nica’s betrayal to repeat the parental betrayal, permitting her to back off from her quest for a multicultural identity with treachery as her excuse. Just as her mother’s sexual betrayal of her (by The Singapore Indian woman 147 ‘encouraging’ and condoning the stepfather’s molestation of her) is also a betrayal by a hypocritical Chinese culture, so too Nica’s obstruction of Suwen’s sexual fulfilment is linked to race. The betrayal sees Suwen reverting to her usual modus operandi of expelling the Other, spitting the racial Other out, again, in her painting. The painting, as Mark later observes, had a ‘mass of phallic curves, pale, arching upwards between the dark, full rounded breasts, hanging like ripe fruits of brown, cinnamon, russet and auburn, shading into deep chocolate before the greedy white mouths reaching up to suck them’ (ibid. 304; italics mine). Abjecting Nica, on whose body Suwen has already inscribed at least two types of proscribed racial Otherness, a female sexual aggression that is simultaneously Indian and Western, Suwen fashions herself as Nica’s Other, as an ‘Asian’ woman who rejects ‘Western’-style female sexual aggressiveness and sexual freedom. Narcissistic projection also shades Suwen’s relationship with Mark. She insists that the carefree Mark agonize over the colonial loss of his Scottish language and identity just as she mourns for her own lost Chinese identity. At another juncture in the novel, Mark becomes the racial Other who reflects her racial identity back to her. She tells him: ‘I don’t know why. But every time I’m with you, I begin to think of these things. I feel very Chinese when I’m with you’ (Lim 2003: 187). As Kristeva notes, that which has been abjected ‘does not cease challenging its master’ (1982: 2). Though it does not ‘let itself be seduced’, it ‘beseeches, worries and fascinates desire (ibid.: 1). The abject may release its hold on the subject for a while but ‘it does not radically cut off the subject from that which threatens it …’ (ibid.: 9). Though Suwen/the narrator becomes aware of a dissident complex, multilayered story of local culture, her prior internalization of a heritage of racial looking within her super-ego causes her vision to necessarily split and create new racial borders, new boundaries to replace the state-approved ones she is trying to give up. Thus does the quest for multiculturalism lead to multipolarization and multiple racisms. The novel’s literary project of multiculturalism remains fraught with the consciousness of racial Otherness, which winds up structuring and organizing it. Though the novel may wish, like Nica, to ‘see beyond … clan and race … to link the past with the future’, it is stuck in Suwen’s perspective that one must ‘just paint what your eyes and your heart see’, a euphemism for remaining within one’s ethnic experience (Lim 2003: 247). In the gap between the two positions of aesthetic responsibility, the local Indian woman forms the ground of fantasy on which Chinese female identity is erected and imagined in self–Other dynamics. The minority woman’s perversity is constructed as Other to reflect back the ‘virtue’ of a local Chinese female selfhood. As abject, the Singapore Indian woman is neither subject nor object, but a border.

Achar! and racist laughter In the situation comedy series Achar!, which premiered on Mediacorp Television’s Channel 5 on 6 November 2003 and spun a second series Achar II! the following year, an opportunity to explore, if not to enjoy, inter-ethnic culture is both given and taken away by the national televisual media (Mediacorp 2003b, 2004). A response 148 M. Gabrielpillai to a trend in marriage between local Indian men and Chinese women (Wong 1996; Oon 2003) and also, perhaps, an attempt to appeal to a growing audience of Indian expatriates, the series features the trials and tribulations of an inter-racial marriage between Ajay Chabria, a male Indian relationship manager at a local bank (played by Bollywood actor Jas Arora) and a female Chinese copywriter in an ad agency Stephanie Chang (played by Steph Song). But as analysis will reveal, a duplicitous dual coding of the show works as a splitting mechanism which allows the television sitcom series to both disavow its own racism while freely exploiting that racism for its comic appeal. Indians and their culture take a beating in this intercultural televisual space with character Uma Chabria, Ajay’s mother and Stephanie’s mother-in-law (played by Malti Lalwani), taking on her body the show’s secret dread of miscegenation, its loathing of sexual communion between Chinese women and Indian men. Uma’s over-ample body is inscribed with that loathing, covering it over with racist laughter. Masculine in her mannerisms, unfeminine in her looks, Uma, who rescued her husband’s business upon his death, is a condensed metaphor of a disavowed fear of Indian patriarchal masculinity, here rendered perversely present in a female body. The dual coding of the show is evident in Mediacorp TV’s description of Achar! on the show’s main webpage as a series that is both about the generic (i.e. non- ethnic or racial) problems of newly married couples negotiating each other and dealing with meddling in-laws as well as being about the cross-cultural problems raised by mixed marriages:

Achar! is a half-hour sitcom about wedding blues, newly wed pangs and the battle of the sexes. It’s about the clash between the young and the old, where cultures and personalities collide. It’s about whether to say yes, or no, or maybe. It’s about whether to give in or be stubborn. It’s about whether to wear a saree or kwa. It’s about whether to cook hot curry or steamed fish, and the hope of finding something in between. It’s about love holding the pieces when all else fails. (Mediacorp 2003c)

Racial meanings, however, get a more liberal airing in the webpage on ‘cast bios’ (Mediacorp 2003a). We are drawn to Stephanie’s visible non-Indian difference by Uma’s comment that her daughter-in-law is ‘not quite a Shamala … not even a Letchmi, and worst of all, she doesn’t look like us’ (ibid.). While Ajay’s Indian ex-girlfriends are described as ‘pushy’, Stephanie’s pushiness is lexically re-coded more positively as ‘strongheaded[ness]’, of her as being ‘not a pushover’ (ibid.) She is a ‘sweet … pussycat’ who abandons her kittenishness only when she is ‘fending off [her] pushy mother-in-law’ (ibid.). In being ‘everything that [Ajay] wants’, a ‘beautiful, intelligent, vivacious woman’, Stephanie is unlike the (Indian) women who Ajay had previously dated, who were ‘a little too bossy … and a little too much like his Mum’ (ibid.). The text suggests that in courting and marrying Stephanie, in escaping women who were like his mother, Ajay is in flight from his oppressive Indian culture (which won’t allow ‘Ajay to be Ajay’). Though Ajay The Singapore Indian woman 149 sometimes wishes that ‘in some ways Stephanie could perhaps pamper him just like his mother used to’, it is hoped that his Chinese wife will deliver this Indian man from his s/mothering Indian boyhood into a ‘normal’ (non-Indian) masculinity. However, it is only Uma and Ajay who are racially coded. Uma’s late husband, we are told, created his wealth from running a textile business in Serangoon Road, Singapore’s ‘Little India’. Stephanie’s parents are spared any fortuitous association with soy sauce manufacture, but are instead ethnically neutral retired teachers who live in the middle-class suburbs of Teacher’s Estate (ibid.). While Stephanie’s mother had been a modern working woman like her daughter, Uma is made to link Indian femininity with being a housewife, with women who stay home to ‘make chapattis’ for their husbands (ibid.). The Chang parents, who frequent neighbourhood coffee shops, and their young son, Walter, who loves computer games, are indexed via their lifestyle as not only modern but Singaporean, a meaning that is denied Uma and her son (ibid.). The dual coding is also evident in the show. In an episode ‘Lock and Key’, which won the 2005 Bronze World Medal for Situation Comedy at the New York Festivals Award but which was first aired in 20 November 2003 (Cheng and Ha 2003; Mediacorp 2003b, 2006), the cameo prelude provides two contradictory interpretative frames for the episode. Ajay and Stephanie have returned from their honeymoon, and enjoy a leisurely breakfast together. Commenting on the luxury of having time to themselves, Ajay elaborates the problem as an escape from ‘nagging parents’, making this a show about parental meddling in young couples’ lives. But Stephanie adds ominously, ‘And worse, nagging in-laws’, making Uma the couple’s problem (Cheng and Ha 2003). Despite the website representation’s promise of reaching for an ethically higher ground of an interculturalism, this show is indeed about ‘whether to wear the saree or kwa’, and about ‘whether to cook hot curry or steamed fish’ (Mediacorp 2003c). It is not about ‘the hope of finding something in between’ or about ‘love holding the pieces together, when all else fails’ (ibid.). There is no quest here in this ‘common space’ of local culture for a negotiation of cultures but rather the show thrives on racial polarization, deceptively re-coding the battle between the races as battles between the sexes and generations, thereby evading public disapproval. It is about the adroit deployment of the television sitcom genre to ambiguously but richly convey racist meanings about Indians, their culture, and their women, and mine racism against minority communities for commercial profit. In reading texts as fantasies that screen one from the repressed ‘Real’ of one’s desire, Slavoj Žižek suggests that we must go beyond de-coding both the manifest and latent levels of meaning of the text since these involve conscious or precon- scious rather than unconscious desire. The only place to look for this repressed Real desire is in its place of concealment, in the ‘form’ of the text (Žižek 1989: 12–16). Žižek suggests that such a reading is facilitated by looking at the text askew, hunting for an ‘ideological anamorphosis’, that element through which the text’s meaning erupts into nonsense, where its ideological coherence falls apart (ibid.: 98–100). In ‘Lock and Key’, the moment when the show’s stated meanings of intercultural negotiation collapse occurs through a nonsensical absence in the 150 M. Gabrielpillai episode: although the action of the episode exploits the humour of the two mothers attempting to trump each other in the making of samosas versus wun tuns for an inter-ethnic dinner, this meal is mysteriously never actually allowed to take place. We see the two mothers producing imperfect samosas and wun tuns in their anxious competitiveness but there is no reference to a cancellation of dinner plans. In the next scene, the couple is inexplicably and abruptly seen alone in their apartment, turning up their noses at the Asian cuisine and digging into pizza instead. If comedy structurally starts with the introduction of conflict and a breakdown of communal solidarity, it ends with reconciliation and the restoration of order. Here, however, the show’s creators do not offer a coming together of the two cultures though they could have: it is this failure of cultural negotiation that is the repressed Real of the show’s desire. Rather, the show appears intent on presenting the Indian-Chinese marriage as a shared cultural space that is enjoyably rife with racial battle. The character Ajay is presented as an impotent male, a man without a father, whose sexual life is interrupted by a mother he cannot control. He conveniently forgets to retrieve the key to his flat from his interfering mother and appears unconsciously unwilling to individuate himself via the primal separation from his mother. In an attempt to feminize him, Ajay is shown in bed, pleading for sex from a wife who has to go out to work. He doesn’t even appear to have a proper job: he has to beg his employers to let him return to work after his honeymoon, and the one scene of him at his office features him twiddling his thumbs over an empty work desk. It is only too easy to read in this negative portrayal of Ajay a disavowed displacement of the fears of the show’s Chinese creative team, comprising writer Cheng Hui Chin, director Kelvin Ha, and producer Tan Poh Choo, regarding the sexual potency of the Indian man, who keeps sexually poaching on their racial territory in real life. The show effectively cues the need of the majority community to control this cultural-sexual insurrection in their midst, and points to Chinese need to dominate the minority race, desires which are disavowed and projected instead onto the very unfortunately fat actor who plays Uma. Uma’s hypervisibility, her larger-than-life gestures, her incongruous way of swanning around in flamboyant sarees while talking in an Oxbridge accent suggest that she is a phantasmatic creation that points to the creative team’s racist attitudes and its fear of Indians. Even their racism is displaced onto Uma, and consequently we have the unlikely figure of a woman from a minority community attempting to bring the majority community to its knees – a neat reversal of the racial power dynamics in real life. As a critical reading of the episode reveals, the show is about a Chinese woman’s ambivalent feelings towards her Indian husband. Much as she loves him, Stephanie cannot forget Ajay’s Indianness. Stephanie’s need to abject her mother-in-law by moving quickly to shut out Uma, to deny her a ‘key’ and symbolic and physical entry into her marital home, unveils her need to separate her husband from his Indianness – to move him towards ‘neutral’ racial ground in finally preferring pizza over his mother’s samosas and chapattis. The show indeed splits between its need to reflect a fact of intercultural life in Singapore, that Indian men are marrying Chinese women, and its inability to be happy about it. The Singapore Indian woman 151 Interculturalism and local female subjectivity: breaking the ‘race’ mould In her novel Shadow Theatre (2002), Fiona Cheong appears to write from memories she may have had of a ‘real’ inter-cultural world that existed in Singapore through at least the 1950s to the 1970s. Set in old housing estates on the East Coast in the 1990s, and recalling earlier times when these were surrounded by kampongs (rural villages), the novel brings back to mind the culture of upper-middle-class men and women educated in English during the colonial era, largely in Catholic mission and single-sex schools, whose inter-ethnic social transactions were cemented by their Catholic or Christian colonial education. Living, too, in proximity to British army service families, they crystallized an Anglo-Malayan inter-culture that is rarely remembered today. Racial identifications were not very strong in this world and mixed marriages were not rare. Dismantled by nation-building and rapid urbaniza- tion and by the government’s ‘Asianization’ and racialization policies begun in the 1980s (Gabrielpillai 1997), this cultural world disintegrated so that its sudden re-appearance in Cheong’s novel, combined with the presence of supernatural visions, has led it to be viewed as a phantasmatic rather than ‘realistic’ representation of national culture. But whether ‘authentic’ or phantasmatic, whether springing from real-life experience or influenced by American-Asian literary mythologizing of diasporic subjectivities, this ‘fictional’ female world presents us with a vision of social relationships in a possible and plausible local multiculturalism that can be differentiated from the state’s promotion of a national mosaic of discrete racialized subjectivities, a ‘multiracialism’, which, as we have seen in Christine Lim’s novel, inevitably by its own ‘racial’ logic, invites racial polarizations and abjections of the Other in the psychic formation of the national subject. Cheong’s model of national subjectivity more convincingly reflects the mental life of English-educated women from minority communities, who have to transgress or ‘forget’ their racial identifications daily in order to live, work, love and belong in settings dominated by other cultures, both Western and Chinese. Although issues concerning race are never explicitly tackled in the novel, Cheong’s project of inscribing a Southeast Asian sensibility is implicitly framed against the racialization that was part and parcel of the Nanyang story of Singapore’s nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant roots, told repeatedly through the 1990s in local literature. Opening her mystery narrative with a ‘Compiler’s Note’ (Cheong 2002: xi–xii), she re-scopes Singapore’s story as the coming together of various cultures, leading us from the early settlement of Chinese in Temasek in the fourteenth century, to the later building of the re-named Singapura by a founder of Malay-Indian parentage, Sang Nila Utama, to Singapore’s place in the Hindu- Buddhist maritime kingdom of Srivijaya, and then finally to the twentieth-century struggle for independence from colonial British power. Cheong’s feminization of what she calls her ‘unofficial’ history as being the story of a ‘race of women who still speak the language of the dreamer, who write in a saltwater wind, and breathe like the changing light over the sea’ (ibid.: xii; italics mine) is significant to her combating of state multiracialism since, if the CMIO matrix of racial identifications 152 M. Gabrielpillai involves patriarchal cultures, then the countering inter-culturalism can only emerge from its interstitial and subterranean or repressed spaces, which would certainly include, among others, disidentifying women who provide a current of resistance that ripples through local society via their roles as mothers, daughters and sisters. In this polyvocal, fragmented and non-chronological narrative, a ‘failed’ whodunit, where various women attempt unsuccessfully to grasp the ‘truth’ of a series of events, the story of an alternative ‘race’ emerges that challenges the essentializing epistemology of the CMIO formulation. Written in the genre of a thriller, the narrative presents – in discrete chapters – the fragmented memories of a community of neighbourhood women friends, mothers and daughters, who recall the mysterious events surrounding the appearance of a female child ghost among them in 1994. In attempting to fathom the meaning of the spectre, the female community must reach back at least 30 years to uncover a subterranean world of female ethics and female justice, where one woman, Eve Thumboo, hires someone to kill her husband three days after marrying him so as to stop him from raping and killing any more young girls, while another, Valerie Nair, slowly poisons her husband through a decade to prevent him from causing further harm to their daughter. A third woman, Che Halimah, uses her black-magic arts to support women’s struggle against male power. But if this world is too disturb- ingly dark, it also spawns a spirituality that allows women from different cultures to recognize themselves in each other, across racial boundaries. Neither does this recognition involve an essential ‘Asian’ commonality of values but takes in the acknowledgement of the radical difference of the ‘Other’. Cheong’s novel offers many examples of Benjamin’s (1998) model of a doubly identified selfhood where the self balances the negation of the other’s difference with recognition of the other. The Chinese Catholic Rose Sim, for instance, is fully aware that the Chinese-Indian Shakilah Nair is entirely unlike her. Shakilah is ‘wild’ where Rose is tame. Shakilah is vivacious where Rose is introverted and repressed. Yet the two have been best friends since childhood. Shakilah’s daring and her talent expands and moves Rose’s timid soul in something that could well be an unacknowledged lesbian love. Again, Helen Sim, Rose’s mother, may be very Catholic, but she is not averse to believing in the radically un-Catholic pontianaks (the vampires of Malay mythology who are attracted to the placental remains of childbirth) so that when Shakilah is about to give birth at home, Helen helps fence her home with sticks with pointed ends to protect her against vampires. Then there are three domestic helpers in the novel, the Tamil Malika, the possibly Malay Sali, and Lulu Mendez (nationality unknown), all with radically different personalities and backgrounds who somehow manage to understand even the finer points of one another’s desires. Encountering Sali’s dreams of one day meeting and marrying a famous Hollywood film director, Lulu does not put these down to Sali’s racial or ethnic background but regards the differences in their levels of optimism in life to lie in the disparity between their ages. Though she disapproves of Sali’s dreams, Lulu is nevertheless able to identify with them, sufficiently so as to look into the mirror as Sali imagines herself flirting with a romantic hero, and to see in her own mind’s eye ‘the blunt bulge straining in the fellow’s pants’ – taking on The Singapore Indian woman 153 Benjamin’s doubly identified subject-position (Cheong 2002: 18). It is Lulu, too, who draws Malika for us, carefully observing Malika’s difference from her but also throwing light, through her sympathy, on the Malaccan Tamil domestic helper. Malika’s voice in the novel is conveyed to the reader throughout by Lulu, a literary representation of communal alterity and doubleness rather than the assimilation of one voice by another. As we see with Lulu’s ‘translating’ of Malika’s voice into her own, Benjamin’s theorizing of a doubly identified self who eschews narcissistic assimilation in order to live productively with the radical difference of the Other dovetails with Homi Bhabha’s (1994: 212–35) speculation about how newness enters the world. For Bhabha, new cultures, new ways of being and meaning, are generated when one lives in the in-between spaces of cultures, what he refers to as the ‘third space’. This space, however, is not an easy synthesis of contradictory cultures, but rather creates new possibilities through the very incommensurability, the disjuncture of the border cultures, through the inability to completely translate one culture into another. We see this at a micro level through Cheong’s characters who have what Bhabha terms ‘differential identities’ where neither class, gender nor race suffices to provide ‘a singular or autonomous sign of difference’ (ibid.: 219) but where their hyphenated hybrid identity must regularly negotiate the interstices between each. In the novel, even characters’ names rarely index race. Valerie Nair is of Straits-Chinese parentage but married to an Indian. Schoolteacher Mrs Sandhu is Eurasian. We aren’t even told the racial identity of Evelina Thumboo or of Aunty Coco. But as if to make sure that she erases any possibilities for any fundamental- isms in identifications, Cheong bathes the novel structurally and tropologically with liminality, with borderline un/truths, with uncertainties of knowing. The more the characters talk of what they saw and heard regarding the appearance of a female child ghost on the day that Aunty Coco’s sister disappeared, the more they speculate about the ghost’s connection to dead rape victims in the area and to Shakilah’s miscarriage of one daughter and the later delivery of a twin daughter, Maria – who is born with a veil over her eyes, signifying a psychic propensity to see the spectral – the less able is the reader to grasp a coherent narrative. And as the mystery grows and elaborates itself in contradictory and disjunctive perspectives, the more one senses identificatory possibilities ironically opening up for the child Maria as her quest for the story of her birth and origins fails to turn up any essentializing truths. The child ghost (or ghosts) who appears in the novel, hovering at the edges of homes, adroitly metaphorizes epistemological liminalities, including that of self-knowledge, and the ambivalence of meanings and identifications as well as repressed desires, fears and possibilities. Speculated to be the ghost of a teenage girl raped and killed 15 years ago by Shakilah’s father, now returning to take revenge on his daughter, the apparition could well be a projection of communal memory and guilt, the past haunting the present. Shakilah herself, a lesbian literature professor in America who returns home to deliver a baby conceived through artificial insemination, views the ghost as a girl child waiting to be born through her. The reader could also read the ghost as Shakilah’s repressed memory of sexual abuse by her father and of the childhood she lost through it. The spectre 154 M. Gabrielpillai may also stand for an abjected culture and history seeking recognition and inclusion in contemporary life. Cheong’s project becomes clearer if we follow Bhabha on the creation of new historical subjects in the transnational phase of late capitalism. Bhabha emphasizes the importance here of envisaging the future as an ‘open question’ that is no longer curtailed by the fixity of the past. To do this, it is suggested that the past must dis- solve or disappear into the present, disturbing its temporal coherence (ibid.: 219). The Singapore reader may be disturbed by the novel’s evocation of this fictional seemingly pre-modern time of a belief in black magic, pontianaks and ghosts that blanks out the ‘real’ pragmatic modern time of Singapore. Yet it is only by attempting to translate this past Southeast Asian feminine time into the modern language and time of the characters, by creating such disjunctures and hyphenations in present time, that Cheong can disrupt the flow of prevailing racial identifications and raise the future as an ‘open’ question.

Conclusion This paper understands millennial neoliberal multiculturalism to refer to the contemporary production of race as ‘culture’, where the discourse of cultural pluralism and diversity functions ideologically to elide the racial injustices involved in the economic and political liberalization of nation-states necessary for the uneven transnationalization of capital. As critics of neoliberal multiculturalism have noted, the discourse of multiculturalism obscures the central place of race in new expansions of capital and deceptively codes neoliberal policy as ‘the key to a postracist world of freedom and opportunity’ (Melamed 2006). But if neoliberal multiculturalism in South America works with a ‘postracist’ discourse to deepen the accumulation of capital among those of European descent, in Singapore, it functions quite differently and has caused dramatic cultural change among the majority community of the Chinese. Neoliberal multiculturalism may be seen to have begun in Singapore with the celebration of ‘Confucianist’ culture in the 1980s, when cultural pride followed the flows of capital through East Asian hands from Canada to Hong Kong, to Korea, Japan and China. The neo-Orientalist discourse of Confucianist culture had originated in the West as a monoculturalist explanation for the success of the culturally diverse ‘tiger’ economies, but which also served strategically to move America ideologically in the 1980s from liberalism towards neoliberalism (Gabrielpillai 1997). When the Confucianist discourse was taken up in Singapore, the nation saw the almost instant racializing of Chinese culture. Diverse local Chinese immigrant dialect cultures were suppressed in the interests of monoculturally Mandarinizing and Confucianizing the Chinese community. This bid at the promotion of one race/culture over others, however, required the discourse of multiculturalism to hide its movement away from the earlier more liberal nationalism of an intercultural ‘Singaporean Singapore’. Symptomatically termed ‘multiracialism’ to cover over the multiculturalism that it was not, the state referred back to a colonial racial governmentality to offer a CMIO ‘multiculturalism’ that not only contained and disciplined the nation’s cultural pluralisms and The Singapore Indian woman 155 hybridities, but also promoted one culture over others while appearing to recognize all cultures (see Goh, Chapter 3, and Poon, Chapter 4 this volume). As we have seen however, cultural policies can have deep psychic effects on citizens that cannot be retracted by new policies and which can delimit and skew citizens’ responses to later cultural developments. One can read Christine Lim Suchen’s novel Fistful of Colours as the return of a repressed culture and history seeking to resist the state’s reductivist fetishizing of culture as race. But this text also reveals that any such resistant attempt on the part of the local Chinese community to recover lost histories does not necessarily release national cultural space for the emancipation of the cultures and histories of minority communities, which is to say that alternative Chinese cultural agendas can still be executed from a position of racial superiority. The psychoanalytical approach to Lim’s novel allows us to see into the split quality of neoliberal multiculturalism, its ability to win racial privilege even while disavowing race. Though Lim and her protagonist work at asserting a dissident Chinese identity and espouse the cause of multicultural pluralism, they do so within an unconscious psychic investment in, and anxiety about, race. Though Lim’s protagonist Suwen has spent her formative years deep in Malaysia’s hinterland, she never explores Malay influences in her cultural make-up – about the only aspect about Malaysia that cannot be identified with Chinese immigrant culture in the novel are the flies that bother her mother in Ulu Tampin. The inability of the state’s discourse of Mandarin Chinese identity to recognize actually existent Chinese cultural experience and local heritages clearly invites resistance. But in its quest for alternative/dissident cultural identities, as Fistful of Colours shows, the majority community cannot recognize nor embrace the racial Other but must transform it psychically into the border against which it can construct or perceive itself. Today, however, the local cultural context is different from that which prevailed in the 1980s and the early 1990s, when Lim wrote her novel. The state has welcomed the influx of highly skilled and less skilled foreign workers from all corners of the world, and globalization demands the mobility of Singapore capital and skill to the West, to the region, to China, India and the Middle East. Now a state discourse of cosmopolitanism has emerged but we can see with mass media texts such as Achar! the ability of Singapore’s neoliberal discourse of multiculturalism, articulated as this is with colonial racial discourse, to enervate the emancipatory potential of cosmopolitanism with an erruption of racist laughter. The splitting we observed in Achar! between the celebration of interculturalism on the one hand and the determination to reduce it to comedy is scripted by the racism and racialism of Singapore-style CMIO neoliberal multiculturalism. If the Stephanie Changs of Singapore are wont to pat themselves on the back for having crossed cultures in marriage, the show carefully codes such crossings as eccentric. But Achar! is also useful in showing us the tenacity of the local CMIO symbolic system in warding off new cultural challenges, global or otherwise, to the representation of local Chinese racial dominance: in Ajay Chabria we have a condensed metaphor of the successful transnationally mobile Indian national and the stereotyped local Indian, depicted in a racist manner as lazy, talking too much and as unmanly. Thus will empowering 156 M. Gabrielpillai representations of newly developing interculturalisms and new ways of being be cannibalized by the local symbolic system of racial/racist representations. The question of the representation of ethnic minority groups such as of local Indian women thus continues to be relevant even in the cosmopolitanization of local life. As trope, as symptom, the Singapore Indian woman, either through her absence or her ‘excessive’ presence, certainly points to a cultural problem elsewhere, of Chinese racial and cultural anxiety in an era of cultural fluidity. Nevertheless, this depiction of her as a phantasmatic cultural border figure also poses profound problems for the local Indian woman in healthy subject formation, if not in the ethics of representing multicultural citizenship. But if this errant repre- sentational matrix of neoliberal multiculturalism emerged out of the cultural logic of the transnationalization of capital, Fiona Cheong’s novel suggests that the emancipatory answer may well lie within that postmodern logic itself, particularly in its propensity to offer new modes of representation and disrupt the old. Unencumbered by recent national histories of cultural representation, living in the margins of the imperial centre of America, and with a childhood memory of an intercultural ‘Singaporean Singapore’, Cheong eschews essentialisms in cultural identity for the uncertainty and mystery of living in interstitial cultural space. In Shadow Theatre, a community productively engages in the process of composing its own narrative and, though its members’ diverse perspectives practically guarantee the non-arrival at an identificatory destination, nobody loses out on the pleasures and promises of cultural meaning-making itself. As a text about an intercultural world, Shadow Theatre offers the reader a position of cosmopolitanism from where she can identify with no one and yet with every one. That, perhaps, is one way in which Singaporeans can escape the cages of race and oppressive political multiculturalisms and open themselves up instead to the cultural transformations of postracial and hybrid identities that globalization can offer in its more progressive aspect. 9 Deghettoizing subcultures The multicultural evolution of Mat Rock in Singapore

Kelly Fu Su Yin and Liew Kai Khiun

A family-oriented beach resort, by any standards, was an unusual location for a Heavy Metal gig (live performance). Yet, for several months, this venue played host to two worlds – families with children and Malay youths suited in their trademark black T-shirts bearing emblems of morbidity and malevolence. The inevitable collision of these two worlds and the interactions that followed were not all shock and awe. Metallers with their painted faces and metal studs regularly patronized the stall selling beverages. In one instance, a stout performer with corpse-paint on spiked breast-plates addressed the middle-aged ethnic Chinese owner as ‘uncle’ (the respectful term for male elders, the female equivalent being ‘auntie’), as he proceeded to purchase a bottle of mineral water. Accustomed to such sights after several weekends, the ‘uncle’ teased some of the youths, asking if they were truly ‘dead’ as their customs and attire suggested. The subversion of ethnic spaces took a different turn on another weekend. While there were a few Chinese metallers, they blended in easily with their black attire. One of the authors, coming from work on a Saturday evening, sauntered into the room in office attire. Heads turned in shock. He subsequently discovered that he had been mistaken for a plain-clothed police officer, whose dubious intentions was no doubt to seek potential ‘trouble-makers’ and possibly to stop the gig. On a third occasion, a Taiwanese Black Metal band fronted by a female vocalist was invited to perform. The band’s use of the Er-hu (Chinese violin) with metal riffs and female vocals momentarily stunned the audience who found this combination strange. Noticing the audience’s reactions, the band members humbly apologized in English and asked that the audience enjoy their set. This gesture charmed the audience who moshed enthusiastically to their music the rest of the evening. In fact, they were possibly the most well-received band that evening. Scenes as those above, products of the globalization of music, developments in information technology and the increasing appeal of the underground metal music scene in Singapore to overseas performers attest to a growing plurality in the metal music scene that was, up to the late 1980s, primarily consumed by male Malay youth. This has, in turn, led to a re-negotiation of performative spaces in terms of gender, ethnicity and nationality. The aim of this paper is to ‘update’ Mat Rock’s place in contemporary cultural studies.1 This paper seeks to understand the possibilities and tensions arising from these changes. It asks how music can provide 158 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew a common platform for inter/multi-ethnic sharing that is often not fully addressed or appreciated in state and academic discourses. The first part of the paper will address the theoretical framework as a critique of the over-used, although relevant, literature on ‘resistance through style’. The second part of the paper will address the aspect of cultural interactions in performative spaces with an emphasis on the ‘deghettoization’ of inter-ethnic and gender boundaries in the scene and its efficacy.

Multiculturalism and mat rock: ethnicization of subculture The introduction of television in the 1960s popularized the music of the West, which had rapidly replaced street theatre and other traditional performances by the 1970s. Local re-inventions of such media were, however, the most popular. Bands that sang their own rock-and-roll compositions were as well loved by local youth as the Beatles themselves. Metal and rock music were particularly well received by the Malay community who reappropriated the music in the form of Pop Yeh Yeh,2 a form of rock and roll with Malay lyrics. According to Lockard, this music was ‘mostly escapist or romantic in content; for many the music served generally as background for dancing’ (Lockhard 1998: 226). This version of pop also attested to the liberalization of gendered space, for female Malay performers of that style donned mini-skirts and dresses. The decline of Pop Yeh Yeh in Singapore in the 1970s marked the ‘shift of leadership of Malay popular culture from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur’ and political change in Singapore as the People’s Action Party became the leading political agent in Singapore. Cultural consumption in Singapore mirrored the engendering of ethnicity in the nation’s social fabric and psyche. When the People’s Action Party came into power in 1959, it adopted from the British colonial administration ethnic categorizations of race as part of its new policy on multiculturalism and multiracialism. The Singapore state’s engineered ethno-religious and cultural diversity has received significant attention as part of the transition from pre-colonial ‘canopied pluralism’ (where identities were canopied by a transethnic sense of Malayo-Indonesian civilization) and ‘alternative pluralities’ (assignment of socio-economic positions based on ethnicity) of the colonial era to the post-colonial ‘ethnically differentiated citizenship’ (rights based on ethnicity) in Southeast Asia (Hefner, 2001). In the case of the Euro-Atlantic world, the issues pertaining to multicultural cosmopolitanism entail the safeguarding of individual automomy (particularly for the socially disadvantaged) that serves as the critical fulcrum of civil society. However, this paradigm has been put under increasing review as tensions pertaining to the institutionalized and societal marginalization of minority groups increase. This is coupled with the increasing hostility and suspicion by the white majority of the loyalty of the ‘new immigrants’, particularly after September 11, as well as the compatibility of their cultures to the ‘norms’ of civilized and ‘modern’ society. The experience of the contemporary Singapore state with multiculturalism, however, implies the management of primordial ethnoreligious animosities, and the preservation of traditional social fabric from the ‘morally’ destabilizing effects of modernization and industrialization (Chua and Kwok 2001; Chua 2007). By Deghettoizing Mat Rock 159 the turn of the millennium, the emphasis on diversity has been given an economic argument with the promotion of Singapore as a cosmopolitan ‘world-class’ metropolis. In this ideal, the island will become a magnet for international talent while globally oriented Singaporeans capitalize on bicultural identities to make inroads into regional and world markets (Yeoh 2004). While the state was built on the fear of ethnic tensions and sought in the first decade of independent rule to supplant parochial affiliations of regional ethnic and linguistic identities for a national Singaporean identity, this gave way in the 1980s to a essentialized and contrived multiracialism of Chinese, Malays, Indians and Others (CMIO). Emergent from the fears of de-culturalization as youth educated in the English language embraced and imitated Western popular culture, it shifted to a new emphasis on second-language learning, particularly Mandarin, the second language of the ethnic majority. The association of Malays with rock music became increasingly problematic during this era for two reasons – the perceived Malay rejection of the modernization agenda, and the state’s negative impressions of rock music. The government actively promoted the Malay language in the 1960s as it hoped for a merger with Malaysia in a belief that a sovereign Singapore without a hinterland was not feasible. When the merger eventually failed in 1965, the language diminished in political significance (Bibi Jan 1994). Instead, English language was promoted because of its apparent potential in guaranteeing access to Western science and technology in addition to serving as a lingua franca for the various ethnic groups in the new republic. As such, becoming the main language of commerce and administration, its use had risen significantly by the 1970s (Gopinathan 1994: 67). Malay students, particularly those who were studying in Malay language schools, became doubly disadvantaged as they found their language to be of little economic value. However, being inadequately schooled in English, they were unable to gain entry into the more highly paid white-collar jobs, a fact explaining their lack of participation in the ‘modern’ economy. Barred from the traditional routes of occupational success, Malay youth established alternative standards of social status, giving recognition to ‘rock stars, film stars and sailors’ or groups normally rejected by the rest of society (Stimpfl 1997: 29). This partly explains the widespread interest in rock music amongst Malay youth, its ethnicization and the sense of empowerment gained by participation in this subculture. On the other hand, the interest of Malay youth in this music and their early expression of subcultural style associated with long hair and rock music performances ran counter to the state’s attempts to mould its population into a tightly controlled, efficient and achievement-oriented society. The idea of resistance through sound and style is not merely confined to the Malay youths. In her exploration of the playful parodies of official ‘National Day Songs’, Kong highlights the importance of the more latent and symbolic forms of public defiance to the state where much attention has been focused on the absence of confrontation against the government in formal politics (Kong 2006). In the case of the Mat Rock scene, however, such defiance further reinforces the discursive connections between Malayness and deviancy personified in the drug-reliant and anti-establishment world of long-haired male ‘Mat Rockers’. Such deviance has 160 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew been frowned upon not only by the state, but also by elements from the Malay community who felt that ‘the resistance to integration into a larger society … has [cost them] dearly today’ (Kamaludeen 2007: 315). The discourses of ethnicization witnessed, on the one hand, the growing uncritical acceptance of ‘racial’ categories as understood, and the sensitization to cultural ‘Otherness’ expressed in a disdain for ‘decadent Western values’. On the other hand, sub-ethnic and linguistic identities – particularly in the Indian and Chinese regional groups – have remained stubbornly resistant to assimilationist policies. The divisions in the consumption of popular music have become more pronounced with the development of new and often essentialized identities, which is further reinforced by the state media policy of providing separate individual radio and television programmes according to the four officially gazetted languages in the republic. Those amongst the Chinese community more comfortable with the English language tended to prefer British and American popular music while the Chinese-speaking are the main consumers of East Asian popular culture from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and more recently, in the late 1990s, from Japan and Korea. Indian communities oriented their taste preferences towards Bollywood. Malay youth, on the other hand, seem to be associated with appropriating American cultural forms such as hip-hop and metal to articulate their sentiments of social and economic exclusion. These trends have further complicated the attempts to pluralize if not transcend the notions of race in the examination of the Mat Rock scene in Singapore. In problematizing the shadow of ethnicity behind post-structuralism, Anoop Nayak identifies an inherent paradigmatic tension in its tendency to proclaim the artificiality of race in theory while continuing to ontologize and reify its categories in practice (Nayak 2007). She echoes the earlier assertion of Diana Fuss about the ease with which predominantly white theoreticians could casually talk about ‘post-race’ as the loss of race to them can appear inconsequential since whiteness is seen as an unmarked racial category (Fuss 1989: 43). However discomforting the persistent gaze and representation, ethnic minority groups would also associate the disappear- ance of race with the obliteration of identities and the silencing of marked historical experiences as well as sites of political mobilization, inclusion and change (Nayak 2007: 423). Nayak’s dilemmas can be largely applied to the contexts of race and ethnicity in Singapore; in particular, that of the identity politics of Malayness in which the Mat Rock scene has become labelled as a vernacular subset. Among the scholarly community, the idea of Malayness as a fluid socio-historical construct rather than an immutable socio-biological fact is now considered orthodox (Reid 2001). Nonetheless, the articulation of a post-race theory – if not society – in the republic remains elusive. One obstacle is the need to negotiate with the pervasive impact of the representations and policies emanating from the rigid classification of races by the Singapore state. Existing articulations on the Mat Rock youth subculture (Shirlene Noordin 1992; Fu and Liew 2006, 2007) have been based on a desire to de-link these activities with negative ethnic stereotypes through the application of cultural theories. Metal music, according to this framework, applies ‘resistance through style’ theories Deghettoizing Mat Rock 161 – the contention that ‘subcultures express a fundamental tension between those in power and those condemned to lead subordinate and second-class positions – this tension is figuratively expressed in a subcultural style’ (Calluori 1985: 51). However, ‘resistance through style’ was largely a British-centric narrative of white subcultures – Teddy Boys, Mods, Skinheads – popularized not entirely through Hebdige’s ideas, but by the British media and academic interest. A more inclusive form of cultural studies and inter-cultural interactions outside the ‘power-bloc’ of North American and Britain has consequently been lacking. The paradigmatic foundations that arise from works based on such theories consequently craft Malay identity as a product of ‘discriminatory practices and responses to the experience of being a marginal community in Singapore’ (Aljunid 2006: 374; Chong 2002). However, in adopting this direction, there is the danger of further solidifying what are otherwise fluid notions of Malayness into forms of insular and exclusive identities. Furthermore, studies on Malay marginality rarely address the gendered dimensions of cultural stereotypes originating from the colonial era. Immediate post-independence stereotypes of Malay deviancy – the school drop-out, the drug taker and the indolent musician – were invariably masculine. However, Mat Rock today no longer holds the same connotations of deviancy with the greater social space given to the performing arts. Cultural stereotypes have also shifted from the masculine to the feminized stereotype of the teenage Malay mother, whose dysfunctionality has even been placed in the spotlight as one of the pressing problems for the Malay Muslim community highlighted in the annual Prime Minister National Day Rally (Lee 2007). We suspect that the crystallization of race and ethnicity by the state in the name of multiracialism has also encroached into scholarly studies on Singapore society. As Kuo highlights, these divides created by the pursuit (or in the case of Singapore, the engineering) of heterogeneity denies hybridization, pigeonholes subjects into traditions without historical contexts and imposes a dominant grid of making sense of plurality (Kuo 2003: 224). This paper seeks to explore new possibilities and tensions arising by looking at the actual and more routine operation of multiculturalism and hybridity away from state-centric discourses. It asks how music can provide a common platform for inter/multi-ethnic sharing that is often not fully addressed or appreciated in state and academic discourses. More importantly, we seek to provide a less reified understanding of the ethnicized consumption and production of music in relation to wider debates in cultural studies. As the article will elaborate, diversity takes on many meanings – such as the participation of women and ethnic groups other than Malay – in a subculture identified not with white youths, but with male Malays. An amorphous deghettoization theory of music far more adequately explains this phenomenon.

Deghettoization In sociological terms, the ghetto is an ‘inner-urban area characterized by the spatial concentration of disadvantage … often associated with particular ethnic groups’ (Marshall 1994: 201). Derived from the historical reference to the Jewish areas of 162 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew European cities, the concept of the ghetto has also taken on new social significance as an articulation of inner-city African-American social consciousness and politics. At the same time, since the 1980s, the problematic position of visibly popular white hip-hop artistes such as Vanilla Ice, the Beastie Boys and Eminen have challenged the definitional limits of hip-hop as an unmediated articulation of blackness and an American cultural product. In the 1990s and beyond, such debates have shifted from the authenticity of hip-hop by white American and non-American artistes to hip-hop produced in languages other than English emanating from outside Europe and North America. This debate is particularly pertinent in the case of Taiwan, Korea and Japan, where the popularity of hip-hop has witnessed, in the last two decades, an explosion in fashion styles, MTVs and music groups involved in its production and consumption, but where such consumption has also been accused of inauthenticity, of lacking in political content and of being a medium of pure capitalism. In Fetishized Blackness, Cornyetz (1994: 117) argues that hip-hop in Japan is imitative and reflects superficial Americanism, that ‘Japan’s enthusiasm for African American style does not emanate from an internal, alternate discourse’, but ‘is introduced through mostly American images (MTV, movies, commercials), which are then reproduced by Japanese youth’. Blackness is racialised as the style of the moment, a ‘disengagement of style from content’ without emanicipatory possibilities for inter- racial interactions and understandings (ibid.: 117). While Cornyetz’s concerns about the commericalistion of a racialized black mask in Japan are justifiable, it is fixated upon the bodily representations and appropriations of blackness as its sole political meaning. Hence it avoids asking what this musical genre means for Japanese youth. It also plays into the distinction between the authentic and the inauthentic wherein the employment of a black musical medium by a non-black body is perceived as having little real, new or innovative meanings for youth beyond its proported Americanization and blackness as cultural capital. Furthermore, the problematic of ‘blackness’ and its appropriation does not exist just in the case of the non-black consumption of blackness. Forman’s (2006) study of refugee and immigrant Somali youth in North America and their problematic consumption of hip hop has unsettled the accepted paradigms of hip hop as an authentically universalizable black medium. Prevailing cultural theory uses the authenticity framework as a critique of the commercialization of popular cultures by multinational corporations. While the insensitive universalization of a subculture may result in dilution of the culture’s historical origins and evolution, there is the danger of falling back on essentialized social and cultural stereotypes to articulate a more exclusivist ownership. Cultural theory needs to move beyond an imagined cultural genesis to highlight and theorize more trans-cultural and pluralized common spaces that such identities are founded upon, a task that requires ‘both new histories and new means of representation’ (Mirzoeff 2001: 287; Gilroy 1993: 72–110). Could we not, as Gilroy (1991b) suggests, think about blackness as an ‘open’ category, a form of deghettoization? The concept of deghettoization in this paper refers to the unsettling of ethnic, national and gendered boundaries of music production and consumption as an Deghettoizing Mat Rock 163 emancipatory framework for the research. Deghettoization asks if there are possibilities for understanding how genres are appropriated and consumed beyond the Fanonian impasse of ‘black skins and white masks’ – the reduction of consumption and re-interpretation to the products of a colonized mind. Deghettoization may also be applied to the internal shifts and movements within a re-interpreted medium and its various cultural meanings. It is applied in this study to search for coherence between a white and an often ethnocentric Western musical form, and to its long history of appropriation by Malay youths in Singapore.

Points of intersection: the deghettoization of Mat Rock While Malay youth defined metal and rock music as a form of ‘Malay’ consumption, it was conversely true that very few outside this group were interested in this music because of its association with deviant acts of unemployment and drug consumption. Hence, non-Malay participants prove to be the exception, both in terms of music tastes and their participation in a subculture. Such participants are usually drawn by their interest in the music, and second, by the possibility of more bohemian alternatives. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s utopia of a singular and common public sphere for civil participation, Nancy Fraser contends that in more acutely stratified societies, arrangements that accommodate contestation among a plurality of competing publics ‘better promotes the ideal of participatory parity than does a single, comprehensive and overarching public’ (Fraser 1993: 527). These arenas, which she terms ‘subaltern counter-publics’, emerge in response to exclusions within the dominant publics. These subaltern counter-publics possess the dual characteristics of spaces of withdrawal and regroupment, as well as those of agitation and activity (ibid.: 528). Consequently, despite their minority status within this scene, non-Malay participants have been steadily increasing since the 1990s. Among the most prominent rock/metal bands in the 1980s was Opposition Party, also known by their nickname of OP, consisting of Chinese and Malay members. Another predominant group is Rudra whose members are ethnic Indians who employ Indian iconography in their albums. The subculture had also been rendered crucial support by two prominent radio disc jockeys (DJs), namely Chris Ho (an ethnic Chinese) and Paul Zach (an American resident) who provided the ‘demos’ (demonstration recordings) of metal bands with crucial airtime and media coverage on commercial stations. Several prominent Chinese-owned music retail outlets like Roxy, DaDa records, Sembawang Music Centre and Queensway Music Centre also played an important role in bringing in metal music albums. A combination of both profit and passion was also seen in BigO (which stands for ‘Before I get Old’), a music magazine devoted to alternative music in Singapore. With an emphasis on the local music scene, BigO prominently featured Malay-based Heavy Metal bands and their recordings as well as information on venues of gigs. The meagre economic prospects of the subculture also brought together volunteers of different ethnicities and occupational backgrounds who had to contend with issues such as accessibility, cost and the existing prejudices against this music genre. 164 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew Within the context of the music subcultures in Singapore, gigs have been providing the common plural space for a more multi-ethnic participation by audiences and performers both from within Singapore and from abroad. Encounters within such a space are an interesting combination of cultural ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ that seems to be based on sub-cultural knowledge and familiarity as opposed to ethnicity alone.

Language It is a common practice for bands to perform cover versions from American and Scandinavian metal music albums that are sung predominantly in English. Nonetheless, away from the stage, Bahasa Melayu, Malay language (recently more associated with Malay working-class youths) becomes the primary form of informal communication during gigs. Hence, non-Malay participants in the scene do often express feelings of marginalization, especially when they first venture into the scene. However, such barriers usually break down after one begins to be more involved as a participant, performer or gig organizer. A crucial factor in this respect has been the use of the English language as a formal mode of communication. Whereas informal discussions are carried out in Malay, announcements by the hosts during performances are usually in English, occasionally peppered with Malay. In Malaysia on the other hand, Malay is commonly used in Heavy Metal gigs (dominated by the ethnic Malay majority) both in the songs and in the announcements. As such, it has become awkward for Malaysian bands performing in Singapore to communicate in English. Metal fanzines in the republic are likewise written in the English language. To a certain extent, the use of the more common language medium of English reflects an extension of the ethos of the mainstream culture and the state’s emphasis on the language as a binding force for the various races. This practice, however, has indeed lifted the language barrier for non-Malay Singaporeans and foreigners to participate more actively in the local metal scene. Scholarly works on Singapore’s linguistic landscape have predominantly given a institutional and functionalistic emphasis on the cultural tensions generated by the government’s language policies in balancing between ‘Western and Eastern, English and mother tongues’ (Siew 2004: 73) as well ‘working’ and ‘symbolic’ languages (Wee and Bokhorst-Heng 2005). In turn, extensive studies have been done on the impact of such ideologies of the language policies on the republic in general (Pakir 1993; Chew 2006) and on individual ethnically groups specifically (PuruShotam 1998; Bokhorst-Heng 1999). In contrast, significantly much less attention has been given to explorations of the more nuanced socio-linguistic relationships between different ethnic groups in Singapore. In the case of the Mat Rock scene, we surmised that there could be a mixture of factors for the processes of language code-switching. A major determinant could be the filtering-down influence of the state emphasis on English as a lingua franca or working language on more formal occasions. According to the official census, the percentage of Malays with bilingual competencies in both English and Bahasa Deghettoizing Mat Rock 165 Melayu has increased from 68 per cent in 1990 to 76 per cent a decade later. This is similar to figures for the other ethnic groups, although the vernacular languages continue to dominate as the household languages of lower-income groups. In fact, Malays possess a bilingual edge over ethnic Chinese and Tamil Singaporeans who average 50 per cent and 18 per cent respectively (Singapore Department of Statistics 2000: 1). If inter-ethnic communications is one of the functions of the English language in Singapore, these figures alone reveal a comparatively greater degree of interaction of Malays with the other ethnic groups than vice versa. As the rock genre is American in origin, it would also be inevitable for players to be influenced by the English content of the music – most cover versions or even self-composed songs have mostly been sung in the English language. One could also sense a desire on the part of the Malay working-class youths to shy away from the apparent insularity associated with Malay for cultural capital gained from the international language of English. We should also not forget the simple economic consideration of covering costs by appealing to a larger audience base beyond the Malay community. However, the motivation for using English includes a more sensitized awareness by the gig organizers of a non-Malay-speaking minority among the audience. Expanding on Pierre Bourdieu’s linkage of language with economic access in the formation of ‘habitus’, Laurence Leong has formulated the materialist- idealist framework in explaining the sociolinguistic phenomenon in contemporary Singapore. He opines that material or pragmatic considerations of access to both economic and cultural capital take precedence over the ‘idealist’ position of language as having both symbolic and sentimental purposes (Leong 2002: 362–6). In the case of the Heavy Metal scene in Singapore, we prefer to employ a more nuanced interpretation between the ‘formal’ and the ‘informal’ in the performative arena. It is in this space that both the organizers and the audience expect a more neutral arena for the aggregation of different genres of music or personalities. At the same time, it is crucial not to portray the subculture as a place of uncritical celebration of working-class multiculturalism. Access to these venues does not automatically equate to acceptance. While the performance space is seemingly democratic, there is a common tendency for Malay and non-Malay fans to bunch themselves according to ethnicity because of the informal use of language. There have also been incidents where non-Malay participants are discriminated against because of their ethnicity and were booed when on stage.

Space Over the decades, Heavy Metal gigs have been held in an array of locations, from government-run community centres and youth parks, to art centres, private clubs, pubs and even restaurants. Until 1993, gigs were staged at the Auditorium of the Singapore Labour Foundation, an affiliate of the government-backed National Trades Union Congress. Localities like the Substation arts centre have been consistently supportive of gigs, having made provision for all sorts of performances to be held at its ‘Garden’ at nominal fees. However, a bigger coup scored by the 166 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew subculture has been the unusual support given by the state institutions through the network of Community Centres (CCs) across the country. First established during the early 1960s as recreational centres in rural communities and new public housing estates, the CCs were also meant to be an instrument of monitoring and co-option of grassroots activities. With a range of sports and recreational facilities like badminton halls, basketball courts and even dance studios, the CCs were also designed with ‘healthy’ activities in mind. Initially well frequented, the popularity of the CCs fell into rapid decline by the late 1970s as living standards improved and competition came from country clubs, shopping malls and cinemas. Even as some prominent CCs underwent significant refurbish- ments in order to be relevant to changing times, especially those in the ministers’ constituencies, many others languished quietly. It was at this crucial juncture that the Mat Rockers came in to enliven the silent floors and empty stages. The intersections of subcultures and mainstream culture operate at several levels, beginning with that between the organizers and the CCs’ managerial staff, who are mostly middle-aged ethnic Chinese. While their ignorance of the nuances of the scene is expected, they have been surprisingly forthcoming in allowing metal gigs as a form of youth music. Though not personally fond of its lyrical and stylistic aspects, the managers have been generally content if the gigs are held peacefully and discreetly away from the other routine activities of the centres. For the organizers, the enclosed air-conditioned and well-equipped halls offered by the CCs at relatively low rental rates have been generally welcomed. Most performances, whether showcased as separate genres or as mixed events (for examples, metal, hardcore, punk, or ska), usually take place from the early afternoon to eleven at night. It is usual for the audience to arrive at all hours of the performance according to the bands they wish to see. The most popular bands are frequently scheduled towards the end of the event. During more high-profile gigs that usually last for ten hours, the audiences and even the performers waiting for their turns are not confined to the halls. Many loiter around at the entrance, sitting in nearby coffee shops, hawker stalls and malls. The gig offers those in the scene the chance to become performers in their own right. Those in the black metal scene, for example, turn up in T-shirts and jackets bearing black metal insignias and iconography. Some may even wear boots, arm bands with metal studs and corpse paint. Because the CCs and the surrounding vicinities tend to be family-oriented, it is often impossible to completely separate the performers from the general public. Even as new avenues of understandings have resulted, such social intersections have also reinforced pre-existing prejudices. For example, a family of three consisting of a Chinese woman and her two daughters were walking past the hall of a CC where a gig was in session. As the organizers did not cover the glass panels of the entrance, the entire venue was fully exposed to public sight. One of the girls, aged about seven, expressed excitement at the spectacle and asked for permission (in Mandarin) from her mother to participate. Shocked at her request, the latter hastily claimed these activities were only for Malays. Another group of young adults also stopped by the glass panel. Among them was a slightly better-informed man who proudly explained to his female friends about the various genres of music and the Deghettoizing Mat Rock 167 rituals that the fans were indulging in, like moshing and slam dancing. However, he also mistook the genre of music that was being played, for this was a punk gig with a younger teenage audience and not a metal gig. In another case, a black metal performance was being held at a CC where teenagers were taking taekwando classes. The black attire of the metal performers stuck out starkly against the white martial-arts uniforms of those taking classes. Once again, performers were given stares by the mostly Chinese parents picking their children up after these classes. Such encounters have in turn enabled performative spaces to subvert the nature of the common public arena. Ooi and Hee have argued that the extensive provision of public spaces like parks and CCs by the Singapore state enables it to spread its regulatory control over society, in addition to reflecting the strongly centralized nature of the government (Ooi and Hee 2002: 438–9). The frequency of once highly disagreeable Heavy Metal gigs in the CCs suggests perhaps that the grip of the state is less pervasive or more negligent, if not more plural and liberal, than postulated. In the process, the performative public spaces of mat rockers have been further enlarged, giving the subculture in turn greater legitimacy and opportunities for more sustained interactions with the larger public. Not all such interactions pass without incidents. Following a report in a local tabloid about slam dancing titled, ‘This is happening in Singapore, would you allow your kid to do this?’ (Ang 1992), all forms of moshing, slam dancing and body surfing during gigs were officially prohibited. To deter such actions, organizers were made to place a SGD$2,000 deposit with the police, which they would stand to lose if these activities took place. Many gig organizers, mainly young working adults or students, could not afford to raise such a sum or were worried about the possibility of losing this sum of money if such actions took place. Similar concerns about violent behaviour were raised a year later in April 1993 when the metal band Metallica came to Singapore to perform. The concert was held amidst a heavy police presence as it was feared that riots would break out as they had in Jakarta, where the band had earlier performed. During that night, 150 policemen, armoured vehicles and attack dogs were stationed outside the performance venue in what was probably the best-policed pop concert in the history of Singapore (Ong 1993). In mapping out the moral geographies of popular music in Singapore, Kong has documented trends of public disapproval and state suspicions of the supposedly decadent influence of Western popular music in Singapore as an indication of a social formation that is plunged into the global economy, but desires to be socially and cultural anchored in its Asian roots (Kong 2006: 110). This moral gaze, however, becomes another layer of criminalizing and reinforcing the deviant images of Malay youths. Nonetheless, in contrast to the high-profile cases, as the frequency of gigs reflects, such regulations and policing are usually not actively enforced in practice.

Global cultural flows The heavy metal subculture has also witnessed an increasing participation of foreign bands from both the region and from Euro-Atlantic countries. Perhaps 168 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew the watershed was reached with the Henry Rollins gig in the early 1990s which demonstrated the ability of independent organizers within the local subcultural scene to host reputable foreign acts. The Singapore metal scene frequently plays host to performers from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and even from Japan and Taiwan. Another high-profile gig was organized for the Swedish Black Metal band, Dark Funeral, in 2003 which even attracted the attention of the local newspapers. The cultural flows have also gone two-way, with the more successful local bands like Ebon and Impiety receiving international acknowledgement. As mentioned by the members of Impiety

Some of the best gigs we’ve done have been in Thailand, Indonesia and Germany. Totally deranged crowds with armed demon hordes in full hell- banging support. You have to be at an Impiety gig to experience an infernal whirlwind chaos and brutality. (Metallian 2005)

Similarly, the band members of the ethnic Tamil-based extreme metal group, Rudra described

We have played in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. In terms of attendance and reception, India is the best. We played to 2,000 people in India and 7,000 in Indonesia. It was really nice to see people knowing your lyrics and songs in those two countries. (EvilG, et al. 2005)

In problematizing the Singapore state’s attempts to engineer a neoliberal elitist and therefore exclusive mode of cosmopolitanism, Brenda Yeoh calls for greater recognition of a more organic and inclusive evolution that reduces the tensions of social bifurcation. Ideally this should encompass both highly paid investment bankers as well as low-wage migrant construction workers to whom both ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘heartland’ Singaporeans can relate (Yeoh 2004). The internationalization of the Mat Rock scene here has, in a way, subverted both the state and scholarly assumptions of cosmopolitanism where what is assumed to be a parochial local youth subculture has become capable of independently engaging with globalization without the instigation of officialdom or corporations. Thus, unlike in the case of commercial popular music and the high arts, the regionalization and internationalization of the local heavy metal scene has neither reaped commercial success nor has it earned state recognition. It is this limitation that has, for better for worse, preserved the subculture from the effects of commercialization and co-option. What is more important, on a quieter basis, is the destabilization of the racial identification of Mat Rock with Malayness where artistes and fans in gigs no longer comprise only Singaporeans even though the gigs are held at places which are considered the heartlands of the republic. Deghettoizing Mat Rock 169 Gender Socialization theories suggest that teenaged girls gender themselves to participate in socially and peer-accepted ‘feminine’ activities, and thus prefer activities such as shopping and applying make-up instead of rock music performances and band formation. Parents may also limit their participation in subcultural activities outside the home due to a perception that girls are more vulnerable to assault (Firth 1983: 226). For these and other complex reasons, female teenagers may be excluded from the informal networks of socialization in activities outside the home environment that would give them access to an interest in rock music or participation in a band. Male youth therefore typify these musical genres by masculine musical or gestural symbols, which by implication indicate the exclusion of adult authority and female participants. This is epitomized by the hyper-male acts of slam dancing, body surfing and head banging – the ultimate gestures of male bonding. For these reasons, and in spite of the foray into androgyny by glam metallers and the softened image of hard-rock metal by bands such as Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, metal music has traditionally been male dominated in performance and consumption. In Singapore, the rarity of female band members and even female participants in the early 1990s meant that regardless of the genre (for example, indie instead of metal), female performers were often subject to booing and other forms of sexualized teasing such as seen in a letter to BigO:

You must have seen this happen with frequency – a female band member walk up only to be met with cat calls, lewd and obscene remarks from a mainly male audience … at a recent Hotline contest, a participating band with a female band member was subjected to leering and cynical jeering … At the New School Rock IV auditions at the World Trade Centre in July 1993, groups with female members such as Breed, Sally Field and Wildflower were repeatedly harassed with wolf whistles. Not only does this affect the band’s concentration but it shatters confidence … at the same event, an female walking in front of the audience received the same treatment. (BigO 1993: 10)

Men, categorically regarding this as a male space, employed sexualized teasing of women to maintain a gendered hierarchy. Furthermore, the masculinized signatures of metal music – slam dancing, body surfing and head banging are physically, if not socially, disadvantageous to any person of small build – male or female. As a result, the performance space here was ‘experienced by women as an uncongenial and unsafe place’, a space where the fear of violation or unwanted contact may be expected (Wald and Gottlieb 1994: 257). These masculinistic exhibitions can also be interpreted as part of the psycho-cultural anxieties of the ethnic minority groups where instituting the ‘right form of masculinity was critical to the survival of race and to the elaboration of its biopolitical interests’ (Gilroy, 2004: 139–40). In the context of Mat Rock within the sonic politics of Singapore, Heavy Metal music was considered as the ‘Malay (male) noise’ that shouts back at the 170 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew candy-floss (feminized) Chinese (Hong Kong and Taiwanese) pop music of the mainstream. However, from the late 1990s, there was a noticeable increase in the number of female metal music fans. The reasons for the increase in female participation are not always clear. It is possible that Western pop/rock bands such as Bon Jovi and East Asian rock movements such as Visual Kei, by presenting a softer, more feminized image, have increased the interest in metal amongst women since the 1980s. In the case of Singapore, the state no longer regards metal music as a highly deviant and contentious art form. Hence, parents may in turn be more willing to permit their daughter’s participation in this scene. The increase has meant that while, as a whole, female participation remains feminized and accorded the supporting role of girlfriends of band members and ticket collectors, the noticeable increase in female participation as fans of metal music and as performers transformed the appropriation of space by female metal fans. Female participants who in the 1980s were unable to penetrate into the symbolic heart of moshing or slam dancing have effectively responded to the discomforts of inter-gender ‘violation’ (for both men and women) during moshing or slam dancing through the formation of all-female groups. Maintaining a discrete circle allows them to avoid ‘unintended’ problems and misunderstandings that may arise from close physical contact with the opposite sex. In the area of performance, female band members have become more common, although all-women metal bands are a rarity. Most metal bands with women are typically mixed bands. Patriarchy still exists in the scene. If female fans are not dismissed, they are held to higher standards and more scrutiny compared with male fans. To prove their ‘authenticity’ as consumers of the genre, they are expected to be participants for an extended period of time.

Conclusion From its beginnings in the 1970s, the terminology and subculture of Mat Rock have been largely associated in the ethnic Chinese-dominated mainstream culture with an image of male Malay working-class youth deviance. It is, however, a space that the latter has proudly carved out for itself as part of the resistance to the ethos and mythos of the mainstream, particularly during the harshest years of state censure, most notably in its disdain for males with long hair. By reinforcing its subcultural identity, the Mat Rock scene has, however, also hardened the stereotypical racial representations of rebellious and indolent Malay youth. However, this popular assumption has sidelined a more pluralistic involvement of non-Malays in the scene as artistes and audiences as well as industry players from both within and outside Singapore. From bands to radio station DJs, and from spectators to record shop owners, these participants have assisted and benefited in the expansion of the performative space of the genre. In the process, the increasing prominence of the scene in the public sphere has also brought the subculture into greater contact with mainstream culture through performance venues from conference halls to restaurants and, more crucially, the government-run community centres. At the same time, these venues have provided the crucial space for a more Deghettoizing Mat Rock 171 cosmopolitan participation from its counterparts from around the region and the world. Similarly, local bands are also making headway in overseas gigs as the Mat Rock scene is beginning to make itself known to the world. In a way, the interactions within the Mat Rok scene featured here can serve to question the assumptions of the critics and champions towards the management of differences by the Singapore government. Moving away from the orthodoxy of hybridity as a contradiction, if not resistance to meta-narrative of the nation-state, Arif Dirlik (2002: 443–4) argues that the former is also the product of the latter. The official promotion of English as the lingua franca, the government-sponsored Community Centres and the general indifference of the police at gigs have in fact engendered new zones of organic multicultural interactions that have not been commonly acknowledged by detractors. Officialdom’s role in facilitating capital and labour mobility, which is causally associated with exploitative neo-liberal capitalism, has further sustained the Mat Rok scene on a quasi-commercial basis in addition to fostering more extensive international networks. Rather than the McDonaldization or colonial mimicry of culture as national governments and cultural theorists feared, the Mat Rock scene shows the active reconfiguration and appropriation of the American-based Heavy Metal scene into a uniquely indigenous phenomenon. This, however, does not indicate a celebratory progress towards cosmopolitan multiculturalism or that youth musical cultures in the postcolonial era of the twenty-first century are beyond strict territorially bound units as Huq (2006: 167) optimistically argues. Behind the apparently more inclusive formal performative space of the gig, with the use of English as the main language of communication, lie less visible tensions. At the informal level, the audience seems dominated by Malay youths who remained segregated from the other races by language and ethnicity, reflecting the pervasiveness of the cocktail of policies in respect of ‘alternative pluralities’ mixed by the colonial British administrators, and the ‘ethnically differentiated citizenship’ of the postcolonial PAP government. The scene’s increasing prominence to public sight has also inevitably strengthened the familiar historically stereotypical notions of deviancy and indolence of the ‘Lazy Malay’ in the Mat Rock scene, especially in contacts between ethnic Chinese middle-class parents and Malay working-class youths. Occasionally, this has attracted unwanted attention from state regulators reacting to moral whistle blowers among the public concerned about ‘rowdy’ Heavy Metal activities. And, given the lack of substantial financial and political support, the everyday fear of those involved in the scene is not that of commercialization or ‘selling out’, but whether the increasing internationalization of the performative space of the Mat Rock subculture would give it greater access to a larger public. In sum, the lived experiences of participants of the ‘Mat Rock’ scene in Singapore become a crucially refreshing insight into the study of the country’s ethnic relations that goes beyond perspectives provided by institutional discourses. The scene’s multicultural nature serves to disorientate otherwise racialized notions of subculture while broadening its performative public spaces. The increasing public visibility of the scene has engendered new contact zones of interaction, even 172 K.S.Y. Fu and K.K. Liew as it has further thickened pre-existing social barriers brought from the mainstream cultures. Nevertheless, unlike the reified notions of race and ethnicity in official discourse, the legacy of the Mat Rock scene has indicated possibilities of opening up more avenues for transcending such boundaries.

Notes 1 The term ‘Mat Roker’ is used to describe Malay youths of the 1970s and 1980s whose interest in rock music lead to the development of a unique subcultural style characterized by long hair and tight jeans for males. It is derived from the combination of the word, ‘Mat’, which is the abbreviated version of a common Malay name, Ahmad, and Roker, the Malay equivalent of ‘Rocker’ (Shirlene Noordin 1992: 1). 2 Pop Yeh Yeh was so titled after the Beatles’ hit, ‘She loves you, Yeh Yeh Yeh’. (Lockard 1998). 10 Bhangra and the reconstruction of ‘Punjabi-ness’ in multiracial Singapore

Charanpal S. Bal

Bhangra, as it is known today, is not the ‘traditional’ Punjabi folk music it has its roots in. Rather, it is something which came out of the Punjabi Diaspora in the West, primarily the United Kingdom and North America, from the early and mid-twentieth century. During the mid-1970s, young Punjabis living in these places started experimenting with Punjabi folk music, retaining instruments such as the dhol, the tumbi and the dholak, while adding modern Western instruments such as electric guitars, keyboard synthesizers and drum kits. The end product was Bhangra as it is known today – often considered to be as ‘genuinely’ Punjabi as it is recognizably Western. Initially, Bhangra was only performed at Punjabi weddings and social functions but soon moved on to the club scene from the 1980s as Bhangra started incorporating other contemporary forms of music like Rhythm and Blues (R&B), Reggae, Drum ‘n’ Bass and Garage into its own styles. It was this appropriation of musical and lyrical styles which provided a whole generation of ‘Asian’ youths in Britain with a distinct sense of identity from their parents and mainstream (white) British society. According to Bhangra artist Ranjit Kaur, Punjabi folk music was ‘really old’ and ‘staid’ (cited in Huq 1996). British- born ‘Asian’ youths who grew up listening to British popular music could not quite relate to it – ‘It wasn’t ours,’ as Ranjit puts it. The lyrics of these folk songs were too ‘traditional’ and rooted back in the Punjab (Housee and Dar 1996). The experiences of growing up in a ‘multi-racist Britain’ (ibid.) were not reflected. Hence, the music had to be re-invented and this was done by creating its own identity: ‘Asian Kool’ as coined by Bhangra producer Bally Sagoo which meant being ‘cool’ in the Western sense of the word yet retaining that distinct ‘Asian’ identity (Huq 1996). In his chapter on Bhangra and contemporary Asian Dance music, Andy Bennett (2001) argues that Bhangra music was based around the way of life of British Asian youths, reflecting their multi-cultural upbringing. Bennett argues that, for these youths, Bhangra music represented a move away from their parents’ culture – a change in attitudes and values. Bhangra was a means for these youths to culturally situate themselves in Britain. Growing up there, these youths do not feel they have much in common with their parents and their land of origin but are unable to integrate into British society because of stereotypes and racism. These exclusions, however, could not be resolved through their parents’ attitudes and 174 C.S. Bal values. Bhangra, thus, existed as a resource for these youths not only to regain a sense of community and solidarity, but also to create alternative forms of ‘Asian- ness’. Hence, in contesting mainstream stereotypes and racism as well as their parents’ culture, Bhangra was an available resource through which British Asian youths marked out their very own ‘cultural territory’ (ibid.: 112) for themselves in Britain. Bhangra came to Singapore via the U.K. in the late 1980s where pioneering Bhangra disc jockeys (DJs) brought in the latest releases on vinyls and played them at Disco Di Raats (Disco Nights) at the open field of the Singapore Khalsa Association or at Punjabi weddings. In the early 1990s, Bhangra moved into the local club scene, and has since been characterized by Bhangra promoters bringing these Bhangra Nites from one club to another without ever being a permanent feature at any – a nomadic experience. The music played at Bhangra Nites here not only include U.K. and North American Bhangra, but also a considerable amount of Bollywood film music, Hindi and Punjabi pop music, R&B, hip hop, mainstream English-language pop music and some Tamil music. This chapter is concerned with how the ideology of multiracialism in Singapore is experienced, problematized and reconfigured by a particular group of people who are subjected to it. Specifically, I will be analysing why and how third-generation Punjabi youths in Singapore attempt to reconstruct their sense of self, their own ‘Punjabi-ness’, through the consumption of Bhangra music. I argue that cultural identities provided by the CMIO scheme as well as those provided by first- and second-generation Punjabis come to be meaningless for these third-generation youths due to felt contradictions between and within these cultural systems. Through the consumption of Bhangra music in clubs, these youths contest both the meanings of multiracialism and parental ‘Punjabi-ness’, while constructing their own meaningful sense of what it means to be Punjabi, reclaiming a sense of community in the process. In my analysis, I consider this new way of being as a form of ‘new ethnicity’ (as coined by Stuart Hall (1992)) in that the production of ‘new Punjabi-ness’ embodies a form of ‘cultural diasporaization’ (ibid.: 170) which involves appropriating signs and symbols from the past and presenting them through modern technologies for the purpose of dealing with the contradictions of the present. These contradictions, as I have mentioned, are created by the ‘race’–class tensions embedded in state multiracialism. Although the boundaries and meanings within multiracialism are reconfigured through the practice of consuming Bhangra music, the boundaries of multiracialism remain very much intact. While the state uses its own configuration of multiracialism to achieve its socio-political objectives, this ‘new Punjabi-ness’ effectively uses the very logic of multiculturalism as a foundation to access the right to representation, as well as the right to contest felt marginality – its very own socio-political aim. In doing so, this practice reproduces the cultural logic of essentialized cultural difference and closure. I start with the assumption that human beings are necessarily sentient beings and therefore ‘doomed to meanings’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964: xiv) because of their self- consciousness. Hence, there is a need for meaningful existence. It is through culture that such a meaningful existence is accomplished. Culture can be understood as a Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 175 set of ‘codes’ through which meanings are organized, making the world classifi- able and intelligible (Hall 1977). These ‘maps of meanings’ cut across a range of potential meanings, making certain ones available and ruling others out (Hebdige 1979: 14). Culture is, thus, how we know. It turns objects-in-the-world into objects-as-known, giving meanings to the things and people around us – making the world meaningful. Yet, culture isn’t merely these systems of meanings alone. The symbols made meaningful by these systems as well as the practices they come to be used in are of equal importance in such analysis. Cultural systems alone have no credence aside from their embeddedness in concrete symbols and the series of practices which produce, reproduce and transform these systems. While deterministic perspectives, both in the social sciences and public life, often equate ‘culture’ to ‘race/ethnicity’ to ‘community’, it needs to be pointed out that cultural identities, both of the self and the collective, are necessarily produced. Cultural difference isn’t the mere ‘aggregate’ of the difference between one group’s cultural system and another’s. It is the product of the active and constant marking of difference and exclusion. As Stuart Hall (2000a: 15) puts it, ‘identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group or with an idea, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation’. As such, cultural identity is a positioning of the self in the social world, through the appropriation of certain chosen cultural markers, and in relation to significant Others. The cultural markers which articulate this ‘constructed form of closure’ (ibid.: 18), are purposefully selected ‘bits and pieces’ of culture (Benjamin 1976: 117) which not only mark out cultural identity, but also meaningfully constitute it. Group identity is based on the consciousness of these ‘bits and pieces’. It is in view of such a theoretical posture that I seek to understand the consumption of Bhangra in Singapore as a concrete social practice which, through its periodic ‘performances’, produces a new sense of ‘Punjabi-ness’ the same way in which national rituals like the National Day Parade seek to reinforce the ‘racial’ CMIO identities of official multiracialism. For the purpose of the study, I collected data on what is dominantly referred to as the ‘Sikh’ community in Singapore. By using the term ‘Punjabi’, I have chosen to privilege the discourse of these third- generation youths who are the focal point of this study. Almost all of them prefer to use the term ‘Punjabi’ to refer to their own understanding of their way of being. While they feel that the term ‘Sikh’ purely indicates one’s religious faith, they also claim that the term ‘Punjabi’ refers to people of the Sikh faith. They further claim that people of Punjabi (geographic) origin who are Muslims usually call themselves ‘Pakistani’, while Hindus often call themselves ‘Hindustani’. With regards to data, all activities connected to the production and consumption of Bhangra Nites were the subject of my participant observation. These activities included pre- and post-party drinking sessions at coffee shops or pubs as well as everything taking place within the club during a Bhangra Nite – the various songs being played, the way participants respond to the music and social interactions between participants during Bhangra Nites. 176 C.S. Bal Intergenerational ‘Punjabi-ness’: migration, community, fragmentation The first-generation migrants were born and primarily socialized in colonial and early postcolonial Punjab. Most of these migrants were from the rural land-owning Jatt caste and the urban-based Arora and Khatri castes. They came to Singapore in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century in search of economic opportunity. Members of the Jatt caste found employment in the police force or worked as watchmen. The Aroras and the Khatris came as merchants. While in the Punjab, their sense of self can be generally understood in direct relation to the Punjabi, its landscapes, its social arrangements – everything produced and consumed by its people and the meanings attributed to these processes. Migration took them from one experience of modernity to another. Gone were the landscapes of the Punjab, its familiar faces, the values which governed their daily lives. What they were met with was a new and alien environment which they had to grapple with – different economic arrangements, a different set of significant Others with different and unfamiliar value systems and practices. It is important to note that economic underemployment and the absence of a strong patriarchal state setting out to define people’s ‘race’ and ‘culture’ in the 1950s meant a ‘uniform material and psychological horizon’ on a majority of the population (Chua 1995: 87). This, coupled with the ethnic division of labour from colonial times, meant that the culture of the first generation could, more or less, still be practised as a whole way of life, although not in its original entirety and with a different meaningfulness. What constituted being ‘Punjabi’ for these migrants was basically taken directly from their lived experiences back in the Punjab. The Punjabi itself, once lived in and taken as a mundane fact, was called ‘home’. What cultural markers which could not be materially transported to Singapore became embedded in their social memories, to be constantly evoked among themselves, to others and to subsequent generations? The more significant elements which constituted and sustained the cultural identities of this generation were the myth of homeland and return, the consolidation of a community through areas of residence and Sikh temples, and a value system partially drawn from the Sikh religion. The second-generation Punjabis were born either in Singapore or in the Punjab. They were primarily socialized in Singapore from the early 1960s to the 1970s. Secular English-language education and growing up in the early years of Singapore’s independence and during the ascendancy of the PAP government endowed this generation with a different experience of modernity from that of their parents. The cultural identity of this generation was largely constituted by what was culturally transmitted to them via the social memories of their parents. As such, they lived vicariously through the past lived experiences of their parents. The family as well as Sikh religious institutions continued to play their role in socializing the second generation into the practices and systems of beliefs which were an important part of the first generation’s cultural identity. The industrialization of Singapore from the 1970s and the demands the capitalist Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 177 economy brought upon the general populace in the form of waged employment meant that this particular way of being ‘Punjabi’ could not be experienced as regularly as it had been. The rhythms of everyday life became increasingly dictated by the logic of capital (Chua 1994). It was also during this time that the multiracialism and the ideology of meritocracy was put in place by the PAP government. Although there is evidence to show that Punjabis had been using labels such as ‘Sikh’ or ‘Punjabi’ in their identity cards as early as 1948 (Singh 1993), these categories have been dominantly defined as sub-categories of ‘Indian’. It is also important to note that in the early independence years, ‘Indians’ in Singapore were faced with diminishing political power as compared with the situation in the 1940s and 1950s (Sandhu 1993). PAP rule in Singapore saw the de-politicization of ethnicity and the de-ethnicization of politics (Chua 1995: 106). As a result, no particular ethnic group was able to politically assert its identity or contest for power on ‘racial’ grounds. What this created for second-generation Punjabis was a fragmentation between the public (economic) and private (family) spheres of life. In the public sphere, they allowed themselves to be ‘disciplined’ (PuruShotam 1998) into being ‘Indian’ (or ‘Punjabi’/‘Sikh’ as a sub-category of ‘Indian’) since it ensured them a national identity, with the privileges of citizenship, allowing them to partake in and benefit from the increased economic activities in Singapore at that time. Any sense of marginalization and ‘racial’ dissatisfaction these second-generation Punjabis could have felt was silenced and banished from the realms of public (official) memory by the ideology of meritocracy. This sense of marginalization was thus resigned to the private realm of the family, rendering the sentiment a displaced one, where their parent’s cultural transmissions served as the basis for their ‘Punjabi-ness’. The third generation, who were born and raised in Singapore from the late 1970s, inherited this fragmentation. This discourse of the public sphere was received via secular education and socialization outside the family, while the discourse of the private sphere was received through cultural transmissions from parents and socialization within the family. It is also important to note that it was during this time that capitalism had to become an even more pervasive force in Singapore as the logic of capital – the inescapable and relentless reality of continuous and ever-increasing production and consumption where demands of the economy take precedence over the individual – had come to dictate everyday life and saw the rise of individualism as a cultural entailment of capitalism (Chua 1994, 1995). The ideology of multiracialism had come to be a ‘reflex of a functioning Singaporean culture’ with national identity resting on how well each individual can claim membership of each ‘race’ (Benjamin 1976: 118). Towards being socialized into some meaningful way(s) of being Sikh, third- generation Punjabis are faced with their parents’ ‘Punjabi-ness’ on one hand, and the state’s multiracialism on the other – the discourse of marginality in the private sphere and the discourse of meritocracy in the public sphere. What this resulted in was a series of felt contradictions between and within these cultural systems which made it potentially problematic for meanings produced to be received by the third generation. 178 C.S. Bal A majority of my respondents feel a contradiction between the public discourse of meritocracy and the private-sphere discourse of marginality. To further complicate matters, they claim the ‘Sikh community’ disseminates both discourses. As 19-year-old Shireen points out

It’s really odd, one moment you have a community leader making a speech about how well the community has done because we (Singapore) have a good government and that Singapore is a place where anyone can succeed if they’re good, and then when you get home your uncle tells you, ‘Girl, study hard, it’s a Chinaman’s world and they won’t let you succeed so you have to work harder than them.’

As a result of this contradiction, the world, to my respondents, seems unintelligible as long as such contradictions cannot be reconciled. Sentiments of marginality, if felt, continue to be displaced, and remain outside the public sphere. For the first- and second-generation Punjabis, the myth of the homeland and return was a major constituent in their way of being Sikh. It was harbouring hopes and dreams of returning ‘home’ that made them maintain material and strong emotional ties with the Punjab and its people. However, the third generation does not see the Punjab as their home, nor do they have a desire to ‘return’. Due to their socialization in an urban cosmopolitan setting, they are unable to relate to the Punjab and see it as a backward place. Although some respondents do agree that the Punjab is where their ‘roots’ are, it no longer informs their way of being in the same way it did for earlier generations. Also, the system of values which constituted the identities of earlier generations are showing signs of breaking down. The third generation feels a contradiction between the values disseminated and actual practices. The erosion of their parent’s religious values and the rise of individualism as a cultural entailment of capitalism mean these third-generation youths are likely to be more distant from the community. Many of my respondents expressed a desire to keep their distance from the community and its places of congregation, such as Sikh temples. In addition, multiracialism as a cultural system offers little in terms of alternative ways of identification since my respondents hardly feel any sense of affinity with it. It seems that state-ascribed ‘cultures’ and ‘racial’ constructions contradicted their own lived experiences:

My IC [identity card] says ‘Sikh’. I don’t think that’s a race, it’s a religion. I won’t even want to call myself Sikh although officially I am supposed to. So yah, Sikh is not a race, but then again, we know that they (the state) don’t know any better about all this. (Paul Singh)

I guess in official terms I am supposed to be ‘Indian’. And its only because I’m not Chinese, Malay or Eurasian, that’s the only reason I can think of. I mean, I don’t feel for it or have any sense of pride attached to it. Why should I? Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 179 ‘Indian’ means I’m included with a whole bunch of people I don’t even identify with. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but when people say ‘Indian’ they mean Tamil, right? (Dolly)

I don’t really know where I stand in all this CMIO things, I think my IC says ‘Indian’, wait let me check [takes out her IC] [Laughs]. What do you know, it says here ‘Sikh’, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I mean about all this CMIO thing, they can write here that you are Sikh, but when you apply for Law (to study Law in the university), you’re Indian, when you want to buy a flat, you’re Indian. It’s stupid lah … I don’t think I am Indian and I don’t feel any attachment to the Sikh community. I guess I’m Punjabi, but how am I Punjabi? (Preeto)

Third-generation Punjabis are barely able to relate to the CMIO categorization and its prescribed ‘cultural’ traits. They feel that it is a misrepresentation of who they are – whether the category they’re placed in is ‘Indian’ or ‘Sikh’. A crisis of meaning comes about when there are felt contradictions between and within cultural systems – a state multiracialism on one hand, and parental constructions of ‘Punjabi-ness’ on the other. These two ways of being come to be potentially meaningless for these third-generation youths. I will now examine how a new way of being is created through the consumption of Bhangra music – the reconstruction of ‘Punjabi-ness’ for and by these third-generation youths.

‘Beats and pieces’: reinventing meanings In attempting to reject and resist the ideas and practices of both official multiracialism and parental identities, my respondents’ consciousness is directed towards particular elements within Bhangra music which they appropriate to reconstruct their sense of self. Growing up in Singapore in the 1980s and early 1990s, they mostly listened to Western popular music which they preferred to the ‘traditional’ Punjabi folk songs their parents listened to. However, they saw Bhangra from the UK and North America as a ‘modern concept’ which simultaneously contained ‘the essence of being Punjabi’:

I mean English music was great, but I could only relate to it to a limited extent. It was more the thing which made you ‘in’ with your friends at school. I didn’t like the music my parents listened to, but UK Bhangra wasn’t the same thing. It was more modern, more improved. The desi [country, often used to refer to a traditional or folk style] vocals were happening and the beats were really hot. Compared to [Western] pop music, it was our music, music which we could understand, feel and recognize. When Bhangra Nites first started here, we practically used to wait for the weekends to come! (R.D. Singh, 28, male) 180 C.S. Bal Bhangra had this groove to it – the dhol, the tabla, the tumbi, and the hip-hop beats. I didn’t understand much of the words though, but slowly my Punjabi picked up as I listened. But I think the most important thing about the music was that it combined the essence of the old vocals with the new music. I think that was what got it into the hearts of the people. (Satte, 27, male)

In their consumption of Bhangra, my respondents take ‘beats and pieces’ of musical and thematic forms from the music, and attach new meanings to them, and through these meanings, constitute their own sense of being ‘Punjabi’. How and which parental cultural forms come to be appropriated in the third generation’s consumption of Bhangra can be seen from the accounts below:

Basically, our dance troupe is where members can learn and pick up their Punjabi culture. We impart and learn a lot of things about Punjabi culture like Bhangra music and dhol playing, We also teach and learn about Punjabi costumes, like how to tie a turban, ’cos most of our members and even myself would never get a chance to learn or wear them otherwise. And the songs we dance to, it needs to have a good desi beat. It’s got to mean something for us. It’s got to be Punjabi. What we’re doing, basically, is making a commitment to culture. We’re trying to say that our culture is the best, because in it, we can do anything we want. We’re a new generation and we are very opened minded. (Jaswinder, Bhangra dance troupe member, 25, male)

There was this UK Bhangra song I used to, and still do, really like – Sas Kutni [Beat-up my mother-in-law].The beats were modern and all but it was the words, or what little I could get out of it, that really made me feel Punjabi. I mean having a mother-in-law who eats your head and then wanting to beat her up is such a Punjabi thing. I mean, its not like I go through that or even think I want to, but that’s what happens most of the time in my parents’ and grandparents’ time. (Preeto)

I mean Bhangra is Punjabi you know, like the beats and all. I love hip-hop and I love desi beats, you know, like those dhol beats and all. I love them mixed. I don’t really understand all the words though, just some, But it’s the simple stuff in it really that makes you feel Punjabi. I mean expressions like Balle and Shava and Oye Hoye. I mean that’s really Punjabi. (Shireen)

The parental forms which are appropriated in the consumption of Bhangra include elements such as desi-styled vocals, dhol beats, lyrical themes, ‘traditional Punjabi costumes and dress’ and onomatopoeic elements such as ‘Balle’ and ‘Shava’. These ‘roots’ or ‘traditions’ were actually, for the older generations, mundane parts Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 181 of their everyday lives. Cultural forms such as Punjabi folk music, were always ‘there’ for them, but were not consciously mobilized for the construction of difference. It was therefore possible for my respondents to claim these ‘unclaimed “bits”’ as part of their own ‘Punjabi-ness’ since they were free from the unintelligible meanings of the parental culture. These ‘beats and pieces’ of ‘tradition’ are mobilized by my respondents within a particular ‘modern’ form of expression, which is Bhangra. ‘Punjabi-ness’ can be thus equated with these ‘traditions’, purged of the seemingly contradictory values of their parents’ identity. Simultaneously, the ‘Punjabi-ness’ of the third generation comes to be constituted as ‘modern’, ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ through its mode of expression. It is through both these processes that being ‘Punjabi’ for them means being able to do ‘anything we want to’. While this should not be understood too literally, it is an attempt to resist the felt moral constraints of parental identities and culture. Hence, it is through the appropriation of these beats and pieces of unmobilized parental forms that Bhangra comes to become ‘ours’, other ways of being come to be rejected, and a new ‘Punjabi-ness’ is produced and articulated. The myth of the homeland and diasporic return was another parental cultural form which was appropriated for the constitution of third-generation ‘Punjabi- ness’. As established earlier in this chapter, my respondents showed no actual desire to return ‘home’ to the Punjab. However, through the consumption of Bhangra, the original meanings of the myth became displaced, and new meanings ascribed and articulated. The myth of the homeland and return are significantly informed by and articulated in these two Bhangra songs, which respondents themselves brought up: Rehnde Vasdian Pardes Vich Bhaaven Saada Dil Phir Bhi Vatna Nu Jaave Oh, Boli Walah Jadh Boli Paave Ohdon Yaad Punjab Di Aave. Ek Din Murke Jaana Mein Jaana Punjabi oei. Although we may live in foreign lands Our hearts still go back to our homeland. Oh, when the singer starts his song Then we remember the Punjab. One day I am going to return I want to return to the Punjab. (‘Boliyan’ by DCS; all translations mine)

Apna Punjab Hove Ghar Di Sharab Hove Manje Utte Behta Jatt Baniya Nawab Howe. Our Punjab Our home-made liquor 182 C.S. Bal The Jatt sits on the bed Just like a prince. (from ‘Apna Punjab’ by Gurdas Mann)

These songs, as ‘traditional’ as they may sound, are actually sung to very contemporary-sounding beats which respondents can relate to. Satte, Dev and R.D. Singh give representative accounts of what both these songs meant to them:

The DCS boliyan tells us that one day we will have to go back. Just knowing this makes me feel Punjabi … I love the song Apna Punjab. I mean, away from the shit of work and all these hassles, I am the Jatt who sits on the manja like a nawab. That is what being Punjabi means to me. (Satte)

I mean these songs tell us where our roots are. Whether we like it or not, or recognize it or not, we have our roots in the Punjab. That’s what it means to be Punjabi – to recognize, and to be proud, that we have our roots in the Punjab. And Apna Punjab tells you what the Punjab is all about, tells you what being Punjabi is all about. You see from the song, are Chinese people, Malay people, like that? No, right? You see, that’s why being Punjabi is so special. (Dev)

Apna Punjab reminds me of my culture and my country. I’m proud to listen to it and hear it being played at Bhangra Nites. You see the song means that in Punjab we have everything. We can sit on the bed and drink and relax and not worry about anything. (R.D. Singh)

Through this, it can be said that ‘Punjabi-ness’, for my respondents, is not constituted by an actual desire to return ‘home’ or even to maintain material links with it and its people. It is rather an imagining of the desire to return. With the desire an imagined one, and invoked at Bhangra Nites in local discos and clubs, the contradictions between the material conditions of their urban life here and rural life in the Punjab do not come to be felt. For the first- and second-generation Punjabis, ideas of ‘home’ and ‘return’ were expressed in their concern for kinship ties, land-ownership issues and the socio-political situation in the Punjab. The third-generation Punjabis, unable to relate to these material realities, imagine the Punjab as a land of abundance, through musical styles they can identify with. They become ‘Punjabi’ by claiming ‘roots’ in the mundane symbols and practices of the Punjab (as show in ‘Apna Punjab’) and then imagine a desire to return to that (as show in ‘Boliyan’). The Punjab becomes ‘our homeland’, and ‘we’ become ‘Punjabi’. Such an imagining is also a form of dissent against the demands of economic production. The third-generation’s imagining of the ‘homeland’ as a land of abundance, grand relaxation and great autonomy is an indication of dissatisfaction Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 183 with the demands of economic production that their lives are subjected to and the relentless drive towards the receding horizon of success which has characterized Singapore’s economic development from the 1970s. The act of dissent is accomplished through the use of re-appropriated symbols such as the Punjab itself, the manja, homebrewed sharaab and the nawab. With their parents’ ‘Punjabi-ness’ an unintelligible way of being, there is little in the sphere of economic production which gives them a meaningful sense of being. Work and school are mostly seen as ‘hassle’ and ‘shit’. The articulation of the meanings of having ‘roots’ in the Punjab and the imagining of the desire to return, indicate an attempt, on the part of my respondents, to reclaim a sense of personal autonomy from the pervasive influence that the demands of economic production have over their lives.

Re-signifying the other In order to deal with such a crisis of meaning, a new sense of being is constructed through the consumption of Bhangra. Through the appropriation of ‘beats and pieces’ of culture found in Bhangra music, an intelligible sense of ‘Punjabi-ness’ is created and articulated – one which corresponds closely to the lived experiences of these youths. While identities are produced on the basis of shared meanings, they are also formed and articulated at the self–Other boundary and on the basis of difference. I will now go on to illustrate how alterity is constructed and re-signified in the construction of this new ‘Punjabi-ness’. I will examine my respondents’ hierarchy of Others, constituted and manifested in their consumption of Bhangra and how these categories come to be re-signified in contrast to CMIO representations. In my respondents’ view, the category of ‘Chinese’ is considered the most dissimilar. The ‘Chinese’ are seen as the dominant group in Singapore, and an unfairly discriminating one to boot. ‘Chineseness’ is often evaluated by my respondents with quite a degree of prejudice. Hence, in the consumption of Bhangra, ‘Chineseness’ is not only ‘Otherized’ and omitted, but necessarily abhorred. This is not done through essentializing ‘Chineseness’ as a primordial and ‘inherited’ concept, but rather through the ‘Otherizing’ and devaluation of the symbols which respondents themselves associate with ‘Chineseness’.

I like songs with dhol beats, stuff I can dance to. Not techno. Cheenae (Chinese people) love techno, that’s their ghande (trash). But not Punjabis. (Jaswinder)

Yea, I love Bhangra remixes and all, but not those techno-fied ones. Too cheena (Chinese) for me. (Preeto)

Here, ‘techno music’ is used by my respondents as a marker of ‘Chineseness’. Hence, the collective practice of consuming Bhangra shows a preference to forms of music or beats which do not contain these techno elements – disc 184 C.S. Bal jockeys themselves share these same ideas and do not play such ‘techno-fied’ remixes. It is in sharing cultural practices and its meanings ‘other’ to ‘Chinese’ practices, such as techno, that a collective sense of identity comes to be felt by its participants. However, as much as a sense of community depends on the racial ‘Otherizing’ of the ‘Chinese’, certain ‘Chinese’ forms are actually also appropriated in the consumption of Bhangra. For example, when the song ‘Dhavey Dhavey’ is played, clubbers, instead of chanting the original onomatopoeic words of ‘Dhavey Dhavey Dhavey’ at the beginning of each verse, chant a Hokkien vulgarity ‘Nah Beh, Nah Beh, Nah Beh’. When probed on this, my respondents had this to say:

You see, we are all Singaporeans. We are Punjabi first, yes. But we are also Singaporeans. So this means we can speak a lot of languages. So when we say nah beh, it does not mean we are cheena. Because this is Singapore, everyone can speak many languages. (Dev)

Yeah, saying nah beh and all is cool (acceptable) you see, because it’s unique. It’s our own Singaporean style lah. (Raj, 21, male)

Hence, the appropriation of this particular ‘Chinese’ form is seen to be a ‘Singaporean’ thing rather than a ‘Chinese’ one. The meaning of being ‘Singaporean’, for my respondents can be understood as being able to adopt any available cultural form within Singapore. Thus, the very act of appropriating a Hokkien vulgarity in the consumption of Bhangra is an attempt to wrestle from official ‘Chineseness’, the sole proprietorship of the Hokkien language. In effect, this is a rejection of the ideology of multiracialism which equates language to community. At the same time, their appropriation shows some degree of identification with a ‘Chinese’ street subculture, as opposed to a Mandarin-based middle-class definition of official ‘Chineseness’ promoted by the state. These ‘subaltern’ versions of ‘Chineseness’ are usually articulated by these youths because they are part of their own everyday life experiences. For them, the official version of ‘Chineseness’ remains an abstract idea, one which rarely shows itself in their daily routines and socialization. On the surface, there seems to be a contradiction between rejecting elements of ‘Chineseness’ and the glorious chanting of Hokkien vulgarities. However, there is some practical logic to these seemingly arbitrary and inconsistent rhetorical acts within Bhangra Nites. To these youths, it does not seem important which ‘bits’ of culture are actually ‘Chinese’. What seems to be more pertinent here is what they themselves deem significant markers of cultural identity. From the vantage point of the everyday and clubbing lives of these youths, Hokkien does not seem to be sole ‘property’ of those designated as ‘Chinese’. Many of them, especially those with triad backgrounds, speak at least a smattering of Hokkien and other ‘Chinese’ languages. They are often quick to bring up examples of ‘non-Chinese’ Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 185 friends or acquaintances who are extremely fluent in these languages. They often use these examples, and their own experiences in ‘Chinese’ triads, as justification that language is hardly a clear marker of ‘race’ or cultural belonging. To them, tastes in music and clubbing practices are the more obvious markers of distinction. It is then within the domain of Bhangra Nites that these more ‘correct’ distinctions can be made, and more importantly, by the ‘correct’ people – themselves, rather than ‘the government, who will never know what actually happens’ (Paul Singh). Hence, the logic of redefining ‘Chineseness’ is, in practice, a counter-claim against official state discourse – that the state’s version of ‘cultural’ reality is false. It is with similar logic that ‘Malayness’ and ‘Indian-ness’ come to be redefined against this new construction of self. ‘Malays’ are considered by my respondents as distantly ‘Othered’ as ‘Chinese’, only they are not considered as culturally, politically or economically dominant. As in the case of ‘Chinese’, respondents evaluate a set of practices and values as signifying ‘Malayness’, evaluate them in a negative light to highlight the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’:

You see ah, when Malays come for Bhangra Nites or those ‘Bhangra versus R&B’ parties, they just cannot blend in … They will dance to one or two Hindi and Bhangra songs. But if you really notice, they are actually mocking us. They try to imitate our dance moves and joke about it. To them, Bhangra is Tamil. They act very uneducated, very jungalee (savage, unruly). (Paul Singh)

In this case, the distinction can easily be drawn because ‘they’ not only do not share ‘our’ values, but also mock them. It is in this fashion that a distinction is drawn with the ‘Malay’, placing yet another Other outside the boundaries of this collective ‘Punjabi-ness’. It is by differentiating collective practices within the domain of a Bhangra Nite and the meanings ascribed to it, from the ‘Malay’ practice – which is constructed here as being savage and unruly – that the boundaries of self and collective are articulated. At this point, it is important to reiterate that these third-generation youths, in their primary socialization, inherit both the discourses of marginality in the private sphere and those of meritocracy in the public sphere. Not only do they feel a contradiction between these spheres, but they are also constrained by the coercive forces of these discourses within their respective spheres. Felt marginality cannot be expressed or taken seriously in the private sphere. Either way, there is likely to be some form of displacement when certain sentiments or desires come to be repressed by coercive social structures and individual self-regulation. What my study significantly shows is that a sense of being discriminated against, felt by my respondents, comes to be repressed by the ideology of meritocracy from the public sphere, internalized as a social norm. What is then manifested in the consumption of Bhangra, beyond the ethnocentric re-signifying of Others, is a displaced dissen- tion against this felt discrimination. 186 C.S. Bal Eh tan mera culture prava Na tu meinu ve dharava Roj policea bulavae. Dushmani na mor gori Vaj lehn de speaker mere. Oye Gwandiya Mu bandh kar le. Don’t you dis my rules and rhythms. Apna Sangeet Vaje Apna Sangeet … This is my culture brother Don’t you dare intimidate me By always calling the police. Don’t make enemies with me, white man Let my speakers play. Hey Neighbour Shut your mouth. Don’t you dis(respect) my rules and rhythms. Our own music, we play our own music … (‘Gwandiya’ by Johnny Zee)

I love the beat of this song as well as the meaning of the lyrics. You now like where he says, ‘Oye Gwandiya, muh bandh kar le’ and ‘Apna sangeet vaje apna sangeet’. He [the singer] is in a foreign land and he is being discriminated against. So he tells his gora [white] neighbour to shut his mouth. He says he is proud of his music and his music is the best. It’s not exactly the same thing here, but I feel it’s the same thing. Down there [in the UK] you get gorehs looking down on you, but here it’s the cheenae [Chinese]. But we have our own music, and that’s the best. So whoever looks down on us, we can tell them to shut up. (R.D. Singh)

That’s our music! That’s what apna sangeet means. I can relate to it personally, ’cos down here, whether people say so or not, minorities are discriminated against. But we’re Punjabi, and we’re better than them. We got our own music and we’re proud of it, and we’re proud to be Punjabi. And that’s what this song says to me. (H. Kaur, 21, female)

Kita sudah berjaya oye Kita sudah berjaya. Cheenae soup peende Te Malayee sambal khande. Paiyan ne saag baniya. We have succeeded, oye We have succeeded. The Chinese drink soup Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 187 And the Malays eat sambal. We Punjabis make saag. (‘Kita Sudah Berjaya’)

This was something we got from the Malaysians during our Gurdwara Cup [an annual pan-Singapore-Malaysian Punjabi sports event] days. The Malaysian boys used to sing this a lot, and we just picked it up a bit and added our own words and started singing it here. To me and my friends, this song is about Punjab pride. We are proud because we have succeeded, kita sudah berjaya, although we are discriminated against. It’s about Punjabi pride because we are better than the Chinese and the Malays. (Raj)

What happens here is that when respondents appropriate more ‘beats and pieces’ to resist the discrimination they feel, they constitute their ‘Punjabi-ness’ in the process. By placing a strong degree of symbolic value on otherwise mundane forms such as music and even saag (a simple spinach dish), a sense of ‘Punjabi pride’ is created which necessarily de-values the Other – the Chinese, the Malay or the non- Punjabi neighbour. Because of the displacement of a sense of being discriminated against, the Other starts off as being culturally superior and discriminatory against the self. In the re-constitution of the self as ‘Punjabi’, this displaced hierarchy needs to be ‘corrected’ since it undermines the very value of the self. Through the consumption of Bhangra, a new ‘Punjabi-ness’ is created and valorized which effectively inverts this perceived hierarchy. It inverts a perceivably racist signifying system, and while re-signifying the self and the Other with new meanings and practices, manages to keep racism intact. My respondents’ attitudes become more ambivalent when it comes to the category of ‘Indians’. The label ‘Indians’, as used by my respondents, has a dual meaning. On one hand, it refers specifically to Tamils or peoples of South Indian origin. On the other hand, it can also be used to refer to the broad categorization of people of Indian sub-continental origin. The term ‘North Indian’ is a more specific term used by my respondents to designate people of North Indian geographical origin or of Indo-Aryan origin. This term not only consists of ‘Punjabis’, but also ‘Sindhis’, ‘Gujeratis’, ‘Hindustanis’, etc. The category ‘Indian’ is therefore characterized by the constant tension and ambiguity between levels of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the fluidity of community boundaries these levels entail. A majority of my respondents found it problematic (and some, even plainly unacceptable) to call themselves ‘Indians’ in the broadest categorical sense. Although they understood the dual meanings of the term, they refrained from calling themselves ‘Indian’, because they did not want to be ‘grouped together’ with people they had ‘little in common with’.

No, I don’t think I would call myself an Indian. That would group me with a lot of people I have nothing in common with, like Tamils. (Dolly, 25, female) 188 C.S. Bal You know at Bhangra Nites, the Tamils, they’re doing their own thing. I don’t think they belong here. I think they just come to Bhangra Nites to look at girls. (Preeto)

Here, the ‘Tamil’ or ‘South Indian’ comes to be Otherized on the basis that they do not share the same meanings as ‘us Punjabis’ in the consumption of Bhangra with their very intentions attending a Bhangra Nite being questioned. Hence, at this level, there can be no sense of ‘Indian’ ‘us-ness’, since the meanings different groups of ‘Indians’ attach to the act of consumption is not felt to be shared among all groups. However, ideas of a common ‘Indian-ness’ can come about situationally when respondents feel that some meanings attached to the consumption of Bhangra can be shared with these ‘Indian’ others. Also, when selected Tamil songs are played during Bhangra Nites, my respondents generally show a favourable and accepting response to them. Not only do most of them dance to Tamil songs, but they also share some of the meanings that ‘Tamils’ attach to ‘their’ music – the beats and some distinct ‘Tamil’ dance moves though the lyrics remain unintelligible to many. This sharing of meanings, though admittedly limited, still manages to create a sense of affinity between my respondents and their ‘Indian’ Others. In addition, ‘Tamils’ are seen as less distant Others, as compared with ‘Chinese’ or ‘Malay’:

Yes, but my friend Maran is different. He is Tamil, but he’s ok ’cos he ap- preciates our music. He likes Bhangra and all. I’ve known him long enough to say that, I guess. (Preeto)

I can call myself ‘Indian’, but not mamak-Indian [i.e. Tamil]. I call myself Indian when I feel there is a need for us to unite against others. I mean, you know me lah, I’m very open to makal makal [‘friends’ in Tamil] all, I can do the Chicago [a local urban ‘Tamil’ dance step – pronounced CHI-KAH-GO]. All these learn from my Tamil friends lah. You see, we as Punjabis, we are more different from Chinese and Malay. So in that respect, then you can easily say that Tamils are closer to us. They’re not us lah, but there are times we can feel together … you see ah, one thing you can respect about makals is that when they come for Bhangra Nite, they know and they respect the fact that it is a Bhangra Nite and not their Indian Nite. They will come to the D.J. and request for Bhangra songs which they like, not only their own music. (Paul Singh)

It can be seen that my respondents can form some degree of limited affinity to their ‘Indian’ Others. Some sense of collective ‘Indian-ness’ can possibly come about when some of the meanings attached to the consumption of Bhangra are shared and successfully communicated. This sense of collective ‘Indian-ness’ is limited to the occasions when particular songs are played during a Bhangra Nite. When a Tamil song is played, most of my respondents are able to relate to certain Bhangra and ‘Punjabi-ness’ 189 ‘bits/beats’ of the song and are able to reproduce ‘Tamil’ dance steps. In that respect, they do not lose their ‘Punjabi-ness’ by becoming ‘Tamil’, but become ‘Indian’ where they can identify with a few ‘Tamil’ ‘bits/beats’ and still retain their sense of ‘Punjabi-ness’ under the broad category of ‘Indian’. This sense of collective ‘Indian-ness’ is then lost within the Bhangra Nite itself if and when meanings are no longer shared when the next song is played. While these practices of re-signifying the Other are a significant part of constructing boundaries of exclusion for the re-definition of a new ‘Punjabi-ness’, they also reflect the tensions between public domain discourse dominated by the state and the everyday life experiences of these youths. By re-signifying significant Others along different lines, they are not only contesting the meanings of different social categories, but also who actually has the right to categorize. The practice of reformulating boundaries through consuming club culture is a claim that the state discourse of multiracialism is factually ‘wrong’. Thus, Bhangra Nites offer these youths a punctuated space within the routines of everyday living to create their own truths outside the surveillance of the state. Yet, because these counter-claims are exercised within the ‘safe’ space of Bhangra Nites, they fail to confront and challenge the state discourse of multiracialism. Not only that, the re-signification of Others seems to be engendered by the tacit acceptance of multiracialism as much as it comes about from a dissatisfaction with it. While the meanings and boundaries within CMIO have become somewhat re-configured, the boundaries of CMIO itself are maintained and reproduced. Each category of the system is brought out in the consumption of Bhangra to be questioned and re-worked, yet the tacit assumptions on which such a system bases itself – that the population of Singapore can and should be categorized into different peoples who share different ‘cultural’ believes and practices – is rarely brought into question or contention. While multiracialism in Singapore creates discomfort and dissatisfaction for groups in creating their sense of identity, it also provides the basic foundation for its renegotiation.

Conclusion While it is clear that the reconstruction of ‘Punjabi-ness’ through the consumption of Bhangra music seeks to contest the meanings and assumptions of both a parental sense of ‘Punjabi-ness’ and a state multiracialism, this practice ultimately confines itself within the boundaries of multiculturalism as a cultural system. While the boundaries within the system become more fluid and relative, and meanings attributed to each category are modified, the boundary of the system itself remains intact. The practice of classifying the self, in relation to significant Others, according to essentialized cultural traits follows the very logic of official multiracialism – the selection of cultural differences, the naturalization of these differences and their mobilization for the purpose of exclusion. At the same time, this exercise of exclusion – a ritual-like practice which occurs, at most, every weekend, punctuating the routines of everyday existence – has its own purpose for these third-generation youths. As identity formations are human 190 C.S. Bal needs, there is a need for the self to position itself meaningfully in the social world. A reconstructed ‘Punjabi-ness’, here, allows these youths a more meaningful existence which gives them a sense of release from both the binds of parental culture and the official culture of multiracialism. This new ‘Punjabi-ness’ is also a socio-political tool, which allows these youths to understand and articulate their discontent with elements of the public sphere, namely the demands of economic production and the ideology of meritocracy. Within the punctuated rituals of a Bhangra Nite, any form of discontent felt against the state and public life can be safely articulated, and the social world re-imagined and re-worked into a different mould outside the coercive pressures of state disciplining. Yet, this contestation of public discourse fails to remove the underlying principles of state multiracialism as the legitimacy of a new valorized ‘Punjabi-ness’ is predicated upon the same assumptions of multiracialism – that of naturalized cultural difference. While this ‘Punjabi-ness’, in its practice of production and articulation, is accepted by its ‘practitioners’ as performative and accomplished – as opposed to primordial or essential – the very performance of it comes to be the most significant form of closure. Hence, we can understand the consumption of Bhangra as a basis of ‘new ethnicity’ as it is in the UK only in so far as this new ‘Punjabi-ness’ is produced via a ‘cut-and-mix’ hybridization which calls on an ‘ancestral past … [and] traditional forms … reexperienced through the categories of the present’ pasted upon and presented through modern musical forms (Hall 1992: 258). Yet, while it engages difference, it reproduces new forms of closures. The recognition of diversity of place, history and experience is followed by the re-containment of difference in order to de-legitimize the dominant moral ordering of CMIO. The socio-political necessity of a new way of being comes about as a direct reaction to the entailments of state economic and cultural policies which renders its subjects as economic producers and race-d ‘Indians’ or ‘Others’ – the former an unpleasant reality and the latter far removed from their experienced realities. There is, thus, a need to reconstruct and valorize the self against these entailments, both by contesting the rights to representation as well as by correcting perceived marginality. Being engendered by such ‘race’–class tensions, the practice of new ‘Punjabi-ness’ ends up reinforcing the racialization of multiculturalism. 11 The art of race Rethinking Malaysian identity through the art of Wong Hoy Cheong1

Michelle Antoinette

Identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves in, the narratives of the past. (Stuart Hall 2000b: 23)

Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong first came to prominence in the international contemporary art scene in the early 1990s. His international fame coincided with a more general turn of international interest in contemporary Asian art which saw his art become enmeshed in a broader politics of cultural representation in the global art arena, his art often standing for Malaysia and Malaysian art interests. Wong is now regarded as a highly successful artist and has exhibited in numerous international exhibitions of prestigious reputation, including the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1996), ‘Cities on the Move’ (1997–99), the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (1999), the Gwangju Biennale (2000), ARS 01 (2001), and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Ironically, it was only in 2004, after establishing his international reputation, that Wong was given his first major solo exhibition at home, at the National Art Gallery of Malaysia. Explaining their motivations for this solo exhibition, the Malaysian curators emphasized the fact that while Wong had ‘gained considerable recognition well beyond [Malaysia’s] borders, and while his art [had] been widely exhibited in the international arena, many of his works [had] never been shown before to the Malaysian public, for [their] scrutiny and [their] response’ (Balai Seni Lukis Negara 2004: 4). Wong’s international status at this time is also significant in relation to Malaysia’s changing multi-cultural society and the rise of new cosmopolitan identifications. The breadth of Wong’s international education and life experience, and the themes of transnationalism that occur in his avant-garde art practices, I argue, mark him as part of a new breed of ‘cosmopolitan’ artists whose transnational life experience and cultural affiliations make for a different kind of contemporary identity (see Antoinette 2005, 2007). As Khoo suggests in relation to a new generation of contemporary Malaysian filmmakers (see Chapter 6, this volume), Wong’s cosmopolitan life experiences as international artist and the kind of transcultural aesthetic he engages suggest a different kind of Malaysian identity which is both transethnic in its intra-Malaysian solidarities (Mandal 2004) and translocal in 192 M. Antoinette its global affinities. Such new cosmopolitan, transcultural and transethnic identifications interrupt the artificiality of racial governmentality as defined by the postcolonial Malaysian State. Celebrating Wong’s international career, the 2004 solo exhibition at the National Art Gallery of Malaysia featured a number of the artist’s world-renowned but locally controversial artworks including Of Migrants and Rubber Trees (1994–96), the installations Text Tiles (2000) and Skins (1999–2000), drawings from the Mind the Gap series (2004), and the video installation RE: Looking (2003). The controversy of these works in the Malaysian context stems from their engagement with issues surrounding the politics of racialization. In this paper, I discuss a number of these key works, analysing Wong’s representation of race in relation to Malaysia’s socio-historical context. Like many other artists living in postcolonial societies, Wong’s art questions histories of modern nationalism, imperialism and colonialism. Wong’s art has been principally concerned with critiquing the cultural bias inherent in present-day nationalist histories of Malaysia by retracing the diverse socio-historical fabric of the Malaysian nation prior to colonialism. In this way, Wong’s art proposes the cultures of otherwise marginalized ethnic communities as alternative histories – or in Foucault’s sense ‘counter-memories’(Foucault 1978) – to those prescribed by colonial rule and its legacies, exploring notions of communal belonging across artificial cultural borders and other imposed social divides. As I discuss here, the impetus for this is likely to be a powerful desire by the artist to re-envision histories of race and national belonging in contemporary Malaysia towards new multi-cultural perspectives based on new ethnicities and intercultural practices. I begin my discussion by considering Wong’s work within the context of Malaysian history, particularly the 1969 race riots; the twenty years of the New Economic Policy (1970–1990); and Vision 2020, the new national vision of a Bangsa Malaysia by the year 2020, launched in the 1990s by then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. I will discuss how Wong’s art represents a dramatic turn in the history of Malaysian art coincident with local and international aesthetic trends, as well as with Malaysian and international politics of cultural identity in the 1990s. I then go on to detail several of Wong’s major works (Sook-Ching (1989–90), the Migrants series (1994–96), Text Tiles (2000), Non-Indigenous Skins (1998–2000), and Indigenous Skins (1999), tracking a roughly chronological engagement with issues of race throughout the artist’s career. I consider Wong’s art for what it reveals about intersections of race with history, identity, migration, indigeneity, ethnicity, cultural difference and essentialism, and colonial and postcolonial identities. I argue that central to Wong’s aesthetic analyses, deconstructions, and reconstructions of race is a questioning of racial governmentality and the problems with strategies of anti-racialization, so as to emphasize the place of new ethnicities in a redefined multicultural and intercultural Malaysian landscape. The art of race 193 Wong Hoy Cheong in the Malaysian context One could argue that Wong’s choice of subject matter – the politics and social identity of Malaysia – has proved too controversial to exhibit in Malaysia until recently, especially in the context of a major solo exhibition under the state aegis of the National Art Gallery. However, Wong’s ability to live and work in Malaysia and to tap into issues regarding race and identity for his art must also be read against new ideas of national belonging in Malaysian society, forged in the early 1990s through Vision 2020 and its ideal that the country should strive towards a new Bangsa Malaysia – that is, a Malaysian society dramatically reconstructed as one nation, one race. This new model of Malaysian nationalism was envisioned as a counter to the past privileging of Malay Bumiputera (Indigenous Malay) ethnicity and Islamic identity over other ethnic interests. Instead, the ideology of Bangsa Malaysia sought to instil a more inclusive, multi-cultural vision of transethnic belonging so as to rise above divisive factors of race and religion. It is in this renewed social milieu that Wong emerges as a vital artist in shaping Malaysian contemporary art in the 1990s. He was one among a number of non- Malay artists – himself, of Chinese-Malaysian ethnicity – who was interested in pushing the limits of ‘Malaysian’ art practice to include art forms not based on the privileged Malay-Islamic inspired styles and/or abstract expressionist tendencies of modern Malaysian art, but on strong figurative styles used to express socio-political critique and commentary through postmodernist art methods. In doing so Wong, along with other artists, helped create a more inclusive national art scene which took notice of non-Indigenous artists and their different means of visualising modern ‘Malaysian’ art. Prior to these dramatic shifts, the repercussions of the National Cultural Congress of 1971 and the subsequent ethnic divisions created by the New Economic Policy affected art education and practice within the overall re-engineering of social life in Malaysia. Following the infamous inter- ethnic riots of 13 May 1969, the National Cultural Congress was established so as to formulate an official national culture founded on Malay cultural values. The Government’s subsequent implementation of its Islamicization programme in the early 1980s, along with its New Economic Policy, further encouraged a dominant Malay culture. The consequent social and institutional separation of Indigenous Malay (Bumiputera) and non-Indigenous (non-Bumiputera) groups affected the art scene immensely as Malay-Muslim artists (ketuanan Melayu) came to dominate with their Islamic-inspired (ketuanan Islam), abstract art styles which were also complimentary to the state’s prescribed ideology regarding Malaysian national identity. However, this changed in the 1990s as more diverse, socio-politically driven art forms expanded the definition of Malaysian art and engaged in artistic debates about the constitution of Malaysian identity. Partly in response to the privileged exposure of Malay-Muslim artists – and in particular, the hegemony of the abstract styles they propounded – Malaysian art since the 1990s has seen a flourishing of figurative and other pictorial art forms, especially by non-Malay artists, which has sought to grapple with various social and political issues, including that of ethnicity and race. Alongside this objective 194 M. Antoinette was a felt need to forge an aesthetic sensibility (taken up by both Malay and non- Malay artists), which was different from the earlier Malay-Islamic and abstract expressionist styles and reflective of avant-garde, postmodern orientations. As a result, the formalist and stylistic sensibilities that prevailed in earlier decades were replaced by a heightened socio-political consciousness and a renewed relationship between art and politics. As I argue below, Wong’s artistic prominence in the 1990s, and in particular, his questioning of race and his brand of social criticism through art, parallels the general aims of the new Bangsa Malaysia. In doing so, Wong asserts the role of a critical and socially committed art relevant to all Malaysians. It was in the early 1990s after returning from studies in the Unites States that Wong began to focus on critical remembrances of Malaysia’s history. One of his early works, Sook Ching (Purge) (1991), is a video installation through which Wong recalls the violence accompanying the Japanese Occupation of Malaysia. It firmly establishes Wong’s place in the Malaysian art scene and propels his explorations of both racially specific and collective social issues in Malaysia. Presented in a combination of social-documentary-style interviews, with creative dramatiza- tions in the form of painting, movement and dialogue, Sook Ching reflects on the collective suffering of all Malaysians during the Japanese occupation and Japan’s brutal ‘purging’ of supposedly hostile social elements. In the video, a number of survivors of the occupation are interviewed and, importantly, they represent all Malaysia’s ethnic groups. In this regard, the late Malaysian art historian Redza Piyadasa once remarked of the work:

[Wong’s] attempt to construct a more composite, multi-ethnic history was very obvious. All the races were featured in his video installation. Old men and women, of all races, recounted their painful experiences. It projected a historical narrative that was multi-ethnic in its orientations. All Malaysians had suffered. All Malaysians are the real heroes of modern Malaysian history! (Piyadasa 2002: 40)

These aims, of reconstructing multi-ethnic histories of Malaysia and emphasizing all Malaysian heroes of every ethnicity, were echoed in Wong’s later and seminal installation, the Migrants series.

On migrants Exploring the links between social history and migration in Malaysia, Wong’s art has often traced the migratory flows of people, plants, language and ideologies in his art as a means of questioning essentialist accounts of social history. In the process, critical reflections on notions of cultural authenticity are offered, particularly by investigating the lived intercultural practices that constitute social histories, as well as by considering the ongoing social transformations that disrupt notions of cultural essentialism. Wong has addressed these concerns, for instance, in the series of works Figure 11.1 Wong Hoy Cheong, In Search of Faraway Places (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1996. 196 M. Antoinette comprising Of Migrants and Rubber Trees (1994–96). This seminal series not only presents the social history of Wong’s own family’s migration to Malaysia but also symbolizes the larger story of the Malaysian Chinese diaspora and their role in building Malaysia’s present-day multi-ethnic nation. While Wong illustrates the fascinating story of one family – his family, of Chinese and Peranakan cultural background – he also suggests a larger story about the historical origins of the Malaysian nation and its multi-ethnic foundations. It is in this way that the stories of the Migrants series become inflected with political commentary concerning migration and cultural integration, Indigenous and non-Indigenous histories, ethnic diversity, racial distinction, and colonial influence in postcolonial Malaysia. Moreover, the Migrants series relates experiences and feelings familiar to migrants of all races, times and places concerning cultural mobility and the relocation of one’s life elsewhere. Finally, the series is also significant for Wong’s forceful reassertion of figuration in producing socially relevant art in Malaysia. The Migrants series indirectly speaks to the broader public debates occurring in Malaysia during the 1990s concerning the politics of race and ethnic categorization in developing national policy. In this series, Wong primarily expresses a desire to recover the epic stories of the movements of various people who have made Malaysia their home. He investigates the historical movements of the rubber plant alongside the various communities that have contributed to the formation, economic survival and legitimation of Malaysian culture. More specifically, Wong controversially links the migration and indigenization of rubber plants in Malaysia to the waves of migrant Indian, Chinese and Javanese labour in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Malaya during the height of British colonial expansion. In doing so, this supposedly indigenous plant is more accurately revealed to be a product of ‘uprooted’ labour and ‘trans-plantation’. This is a controversial representation of history, for the so called ‘indigenous’ rubber plant may be likened to the Indigenous Malay population of Malaysia – the Bumiputera – whose social history has become privileged in recent times over that of other ethnicities (especially Chinese, Javanese and Indian) in Malaysia. The extensive sequence of works that comprise the exhibition Of Migrants and Rubber Trees consists of three parts. The first component is the aforementioned Migrants series, and focuses on the early history of migration to Malaysia. The second part, History of Rubber and Labour, comprises an installation of historical dioramas that draws a correspondence between the migration of rubber with that of human labour. The final component of the series, entitled New Migrants, consists principally of ten black-and-white portraits of recent migrant workers in Malaysia accompanied by short oral histories relating to the workers’ histories of migration. These are, furthermore, presented alongside a ‘reading corner’ for researching the histories of rubber and migrant labour in Asia. The reading corner offers a library of texts relating to the problems and issues of the new migrants (such as their legal status in Malaysia) linking them to universal flows of migration over thousands of years. In short, the New Migrants exhibition advocates for the civil rights of new immigrants, reminding Malaysian audiences of their own migrant histories. Collectively, the three components comprising Of Migrants and Rubber The art of race 197 Trees trace a historical narrative concerning migration to and from Malaysia, from past to present. In the following section, I discuss in depth the first component, the Migrants series drawings, which is rich, detailed and overflowing both in its stories and its aesthetics. Reminiscent of the sepia-toned photographs of late nineteenth-century family albums, the Migrants series consists of five large-scale black-and-white charcoal drawings: Some dreamt of Malaya, some dreamt of Great Britain (1994); She was Married at 14 and Had 14 Children (1994); Marriage of a rubber tapper to a girl dressed as the Virgin Mary in a school play (1994); Aspirations of the working class (1994), and In search of faraway places (1996). In these drawings Wong references the personal history of his own family’s migration from China to Malaysia, exploring their significance in the making of Malaysian history. He tells the story of the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia and reminds us of their constitutive role in developing the country. As Piyadasa observed, ‘Bearing in mind the overt Malay-Islamic proclivities of the Eighties, Hoy Cheong’s Migrant Series … may be viewed as emphasising the “Other”’ (Piyadasa 2002: 154) – that is, the ‘Other’ ethnic histories comprising Malaysian society. As well as recalling his own family’s history of migration, Wong also communicates the broader experiences of the Nonya Straits Chinese, of the Malaysian Chinese community and those of all migrants. Stressing the relationship of individual memories and the experience of migration to that of collective imagination and communal agency, Wong comments:

… I’m interested in using my family, the migration issues and the working class issue … I’m only a conduit for a collective voice of the thousands of rubber estate workers of my father’s generation … I grew up listening to stories. Stories told by my father and mother, grandmothers, aunties and uncles. They were stories of remembrance layered with wonder and pain, conflict and reconciliation, mystery and miracle. My drawings take these stories, rich with images, as a starting point. I am interested in how the histories of people are made; how the individual ‘I’ becomes the collective ‘I’ and the easily forgotten dreams of one person become the dreams of a people. I am interested in the migration of people, their paths, their continuous ebb and flow, from land to land searching for a better life and their eventual indigenisation in a new homeland. I am interested in the rude ironies of British colonialism and the emergence of a modern Malaysia, the clash and convergence of cultures and classes, the hopes and failures of a society. (quoted in Tetsuro, et al. 1997: 189)

Wong’s statement reveals his motivations to recollect his family’s memories of migration so as to reclaim his own identity as well as the identity of his fellow Malaysians, citing this as the inspiration for his drawings. Moreover, his drawings stress the plural contributions of migrants to the development of Malaysia as a country and their integral part in Malaysian society. In this sense, Wong’s Migrants 198 M. Antoinette

Figure 11.2 Wong Hoy Cheong, Some dreamt of Malaya, some dreamt of Great Britain (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1994. series is less about the origins of people and their migrations and more about recognising their valuable contributions to developing the Malaysian nation. In the first drawing of the Migrants series, entitled Some dreamt of Malaya, some dreamt of Great Britain (1994) (see Figure 11.2), the arrival of Wong’s paternal grandmother as a new Chinese migrant dreaming of a better life in The art of race 199 Malaya is contrasted with his maternal grandmother’s affluent life in Malaya as a wealthy, Westernised Peranakan woman dreaming of Great Britain. His paternal grandmother wears a simple samfu (Chinese women’s trouser suit) and clutches a basket, her only possession, as she makes the arduous journey via sea on a small wooden boat with her husband, Wong’s paternal grandfather (faceless, for Wong has no picture of him). Wong’s maternal grandmother, by comparison, is a wealthy racehorse owner with binoculars in hand, immaculately dressed in her Peranakan- print sarong and Western-style shirt; her more well-off status has enabled her to send her son off to be educated in Great Britain, pictured at the lower left of the frame. This story is continued in the second drawing, She was Married at 14 and Had 14 Children (1994), in which Wong’s paternal grandmother is shown surrounded by her fourteen children. The drawing commemorates the hardships undergone by this woman in raising her fourteen children. Placed at the centre of the frame, Wong’s grandmother, depicted as a sturdy figure of familial authority, stares directly ahead to meet the gaze of the viewer. She squats holding steadfastly onto a rubber tree with her right hand, while her left firmly grasps a cutting knife – the emblematic tool of her labour as a rubber tapper. The children are shown around her, wriggling in their worn swaddling and represented with infant bodies and adult heads, perhaps suggesting their need to mature quickly in the face of harsh life circumstances. Indeed, her children, too, underwent a great deal of difficulty and suffering; we know this because to the left of the drawing a perforated frame encases a note which tells us the troubled fate of the children and that only one of the fourteen left the working class by becoming a school teacher. At the top of the scene, a British-stamped dollar bill and Japanese-stamped ten dollar bill suggest the dictates of colonial capitalist expansion and the wealth brought to British and Japanese economies as a result of their spoils from Malaya. To the right, a bespectacled, bourgeois gentleman perforates the frame, depicted in the act of sipping tea. He represents a new class of wealthy Chinese-Malayan who also stands to benefit from the new colonial social order. At the same time, he is a reminder of the overseeing British colonial administration and communicates by his actions the newfound British wealth in the commodity of tea and its exchange, as well as the new and privileged leisure activity of taking tea. Finally, below, a bar of Yardley lavender soap signifies not only new colonial commodities brought with the new British administration but also, metaphorically, British colonial cleansing and civilizing of the new Malaysian colony. As Anne McClintock has argued in Imperial Leather (1995), soap assisted in the imperial civilizing mission by promoting racial and class difference in a new commodity culture of mass consumption. More specifically, soap advertisements portrayed the purity of an elite, civilized, British society, against a race of unwashed, uncivilized working classes in the colonies. In Wong’s drawing then, the bar of Yardley soap becomes an emblem for the Victorian civilizing mission but also for the fetishized status of soap as marker for an elite and privileged social class. The hardship undergone by Wong’s grandmother in her work as a rubber tapper – and that undergone by workers on Malayan plantations of palm oil, coconut oil, and cottonseed oil, oils 200 M. Antoinette used in the production of soap – was the hardship of the working-class labour which helped build colonial fortunes and the new colony of Malaya. This story, then, is a tale both specific to Wong’s personal history and familiar to all Malaysians of every race who have played their part in building the Malaysian nation. In the third drawing, Marriage of a rubber tapper to a girl dressed as the Virgin Mary in a school play (1994) (see frontispiece image for this volume), the marriage of Wong’s parents is shown and recalls the stereotypical class-based arrangement of marriages between the wealthier, Westernized, hybridized and assimilated Peranakan woman (Wong’s mother) to the recently migrated working-class Chinese man (Wong’s father). On the extreme right, Wong’s paternal grandmother is depicted with her son by her side carrying a bucket (a tool of her rubber-tapping labour) and Wong’s father is dressed in his rubber-tapper work clothes: a modest singlet and long pants. In his hand, the cutting knife once held by his mother is now firmly clenched by him, and signifies inter-generational continuity in the rubber- tapping profession. On the extreme left, Wong’s maternal grandmother returns to the story as a continuing picture of wealth and privilege with a horseracing trophy in hand and her prize-winning horse immediately behind her. Her daughter is dressed in a costume of the Virgin Mary, perhaps revealing the practice of Christian faith on her side of the family. The eventual marriage of Wong’s parents is represented deep inset with a framed photograph of Wong’s parents’ wedding day. Importantly, the marriage represents the traditional union between the less privileged new Chinese male migrant [Wong’s father] and the assimilated, wealthy Peranakan woman [Wong’s mother]. It communicates a ‘… merging of the classes, the landed and the land- less, the sacred and the profane’ (Willie 1996: 8). By the time of Aspirations of the working class (1994) (see Figure 11.3) however, Wong’s father lets go of the cutting knife now pictured at the bottom left, for the business shirt and tie of his landed middle-class status. Wong’s mother is dressed immaculately in a striking modern-day striped dress, and Wong himself enters the family scene as a young boy pictured inset with his older sister. Both Wong and his sister are dressed in Western-style clothing: Wong, in white-collar shirt, pants and braces, and his sister in her pretty embroidered dress. Postal cards to the top right and left of the frame are reminders of exotic, primitive peoples of Southeast Asia which the new middle-classes have left far behind in their newly civilized status. In the final drawing of the series, In search of faraway places (1996) (see Figure 11.1), Wong communicates the continuing histories of human migration into and emigration out of Malaysia. He connects his own family’s history of migration to that of all present-day migrants and their histories of journeying and resettlement. Modern-day travellers are pictured traversing the same seas to and from Malaysia that were once travelled by migrants of long ago. Hence, this last drawing in the series also brings the story of migration full circle in terms of relating acts of migration in the past to those occurring in the present. The recent migratory experiences of families from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds are depicted by the artist but, despite their differences, they are shown as connected in their status as migrants, all traversing common seas in search of The art of race 201

Figure 11.3 Wong Hoy Cheong, Aspirations of the working class (from the ‘Migrants’ series), 1994. someplace else to make home. Some of the families represented are those of privilege – well-dressed, equipped with certificates to prove their existing education, and sufficiently moneyed to head off overseas to places like Australia, in search of new life opportunities. Others, in poorer life circumstances and from other parts of Asia such as China, India, Indonesia and Burma, make their way to what is for them a prosperous Malaysia in the hope of brighter prospects. 202 M. Antoinette The triptych In Search of Faraway Places, I argue, deconstructs official histories regarding contemporary Malaysian culture through remembering the continuing significance of migrant communities to the constitution of Malaysian national identity today. The contentious topic of present-day movements of people in and out of Malaysia is highlighted, and within the context of the entire Migrants series, emphasis is placed on Malaysia’s long and diverse cultural history of migration as well as its new ethnicities. This long history of the migration of people, of trade and ideas, is testimony to Malaysia’s historical fluidity and openness to cultural pluralism and cultural exchange (see Reid 1993). As Wong rightly suggests, the history of migration and the constitution of a local identity in Malaysia began well before Western colonization and the institutionalization of nationalism, with different cultural groups, such as Malabars, Persians, Acehnese, and Javanese, making their way to and settling in the area long before European invasion. Malaysia has always had a culturally complex and hybrid history and Wong’s Migrants series, I propose, invites such a re-reading of the country’s past against the more recent homogenizing colonial and postcolonial ethnicizing discourses of Malaysian identity which are seen to privilege some cultural groups over others in the making of the nation. As mentioned previously, during the Malaysian government’s exercise of the New Economic Policy (1970–1990), the nation’s cultural mix was downplayed while privileging the social position of the Malay ethnic community in a form of ‘ethnically differentiated citizenship’ (see Parekh 2000). In doing so, there was also a privileging of ‘indigenous’ Malay culture as hegemonic in the formation of the Malaysian nation and its history (see Ting, Chapter 2 this volume). Such policies are often echoes of the colonial past, reappropriations of inherited colonial racializations which have historically served to divide Malaysia’s people into distinct racial groups (see Introduction to this volume) and to mark Malays as the core of the nation. Wong’s art, I suggest, is an undoing of such divisive notions of Malaysian culture. In the Migrants series, for instance, the legitimacy of Malay-centric policies are brought into question as the historical assimilation of Other ‘migrant’ cultures is revealed as being just as significant to establishing the Malaysian nation; far from being the Other, these once migrant cultures are shown to be a crucial element in Malaysia’s cultural history and part of the plurality of cultures which comprise the Malaysian nation. This alter/native history of Malaysia stands in sharp contrast to government policies which privilege the histories of Malay peoples and promote the Islamicization of the nation or alternatively those which deny difference through strategies of anti-racialization. Rather, Wong’s Migrants series encourages a more inclusive multicultural vision of Malaysian nationhood through recognising, rather than disavowing, Malaysia’s intercultural histories and its new ethnicities. This recalls Paul Gilroy’s (2002) analysis of the anti-racism movement of the 1980s in Britain, in which he reveals the problems with political strategies of ‘anti- racism’. In particular, Gilroy argues that as both white and black political leaders began to deal with racism not merely as structural and biologically based, but also as cultural, they ‘trivialize[d] the struggle against racism and isolate[d] it from other political antagonisms – from the contradiction between capital and labor, from the The art of race 203 battle between men and women’, thereby ‘suggest[ing] that racism can be elimi- nated on its own because it is readily extricable from everything else’ (Gilroy 2002: 251). Instead, Gilroy rightly insists on seeing race as always in relation to factors such as class, capital, gender, etc. Wong’s Migrants series illustrates precisely the history of connection between race and class, racism and capitalism, and how this is mis/remembered in the Malaysian context. It represents an intervention in how history is mis-represented and re-presented and reminds us, against the backdrop of Vision 2020, that the links between race and class are instrumental to Malaysia’s past, present and future and should not be forgotten. Vision 2020, in an analogous sense, is like liberal antiracism in Britain in the 1980s, attempting to defeat racism by emptying out race and whitewashing everything else, forgetting the links between race and class (see Hall 1992; Cohen 1999). Instead, Wong’s art seems to purposefully reinscribe both race and class, towards the hope of remembering forgotten histories in the new Vision 2020. Wong’s art, though itself homogenizing in some respects, could therefore be argued to be a performative act of ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak 1990) that constitutes a political assertion of counter-memory against a culturally biased and hegemonic history of the Malaysian nation. Ironically, it is through the same apparatus of history that Wong arrives at a critical re-evaluation and re-visioning of the past that is different from that remembered and memorialized in postcolonial Malaysia. His alternative vision, as Sumit Mandal suggests, ‘… make[s] visible the alchemical cultural cross-currents in Malaysian society that remain below the surface of mainstream political life, promising an alternative community free from racialization …’ (Mandal 2001: 75).

Asian values recon-text-ualised Alongside Malaysian pasts, Wong has also re-examined in his art wider Asian and Western colonial and postcolonial histories. In doing so, his art unsettles the otherwise taken-for-granted legitimacy of both Asian and Western cultural essentialisms, deliberately moving between intra- and inter-Asian differences and also inter-West/Asia differences. This occurs in works such as Text Tiles (2000) (see Figures 11.4 and 11.5), The Colonies Bite Back I & II (2001), and RE:Looking (2003). In what follows, I explore the critique of inherited colonial discourses that is offered in Wong’s art through examining his motivations for the work Text Tiles. First presented at the 2000 Gwangju Biennale, Wong’s installation Text Tiles (2000), quite pointedly reveals the artist’s scepticism about the politicization and racialization of Asian culture where it might serve the interests of authoritarian governments and the power of political leaders, both Asian and Western. In the Malaysian context of the 1990s, this sort of racialization not only occurred at the level of intra-national racial politics concerning ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ groups, but also at the broader level of racializing Asian against Western peoples. For instance, the ‘Asian values’ doctrines propagated forcefully throughout the 1990s, especially in Malaysia and Singapore, helped to consolidate a cultural basis 204 M. Antoinette

Figure 11.4 Wong Hoy Cheong, Text Tiles (installation view), 2000. for Southeast Asia’s economic boom at that time. However, the end of the so-called ‘East Asian miracle’, marked by the Asian currency crisis in July 1997, signalled the fragility of these ‘Asian values’, once purported to have been the cultural basis for Asia’s economic success during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, the ‘Asianness’ of these so-called ‘Asian values’ was criticized by many for their established links with cronyism, authoritarianism, pseudo-Confucianism, paternalism and corruption. While there is now much accepted criticism of Asian values they, nevertheless, continue to grip the imagination of Asians, particularly of Malaysians and Singaporeans, as they strive towards an ‘Asian Renaissance’. It is within this frenzy of ‘Asian values’ rhetoric that Wong creates Text Tiles. In this installation the artist points to ‘the complex history of the construction of Asia via its numerous autocrats as well as their opponents’ (Mandal 2001: 74). Wong achieves this through the shredding and burning of books that are documents of Asian histories and values. Once turned to pulp, the destroyed pages are reconstructed into two hundred and ninety tiles, set up as a floor installation. The viewer is invited to step on/walk over/trample upon these tiles and the histories and values they once declared so emphatically. The types of text Wong has selected for the work belong to various themes from, or episodes in, Asian history: from South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia. More specifically, they document various dark and oppressive episodes of modern Asia including those relating to East Timor, Tian An Men, Pol Pot, and Vietnamese refugees; texts about or written by authoritarian leaders such as Marcos, Ne Win, Kim II Sung, Pol Pot, Mahathir, and Mao; and texts recording or recorded by people who have been oppressed by various authoritarian regimes such as Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Aung San Suu Kyi, Syed The art of race 205

Figure 11.5 Wong Hoy Cheong, Text Tiles (tile detail), 2000.

Husin Ali, Shih Ming-the, Kim Tae Jung, and Chia Thye Poh (Wong 2002). Through the shredding, burning and final transformation of these texts into pulp, their narratives become unreadable and are made meaningless. Interestingly, the most blackened areas at the centre of the installation are those burnt from the ‘darkest’ pages of Asian histories. Besides the ‘text’ tiles, another twenty smaller tiles display the interwoven images of various political leaders, both Asian and Western. These include an image of Ferdinand Marcos woven together with one of Ronald Reagan (see Figure 11.5); another shows Pramoedya Anata Toer with Martin Luther King Jr. This provocative juxtaposition of political leaders and mash of texts forces us to question the rhetoric of Asian values, and in particular, their supposedly Asian basis. Text Tiles provokes a critical reflection of the authority of Asian histories, an authority made symbolic through a play on the legitimizing function of texts as documents of history. The authority of these ‘Asian’ texts is disrupted by de-constructing and re-constructing them so as to show their relationship to colonial and Western histories but also highlights the colonial/ Western production, control and consumption of knowledge about Asia. In doing so, Text Tiles succeeds in diluting the ‘Asian-ness’ of these Asian values (Mandal 2001: 75). This recalls Edward Said’s conclusions from his book, Orientalism, in which he famously argues that the Orient is in fact a construction of the European imagination (Said 1978). In this regard, Text Tiles may be seen to critique the racialized narratives of Mahathir Mohamad who, ‘far from acknowledging the debt to colonial rule, claims something intrinsically ‘Asian’ in the politics he … cultivated’ (Mandal 2001: 75). By contrast, Text Tiles presents a more self-conscious look at Asian histories 206 M. Antoinette revealing that a Malaysian nationalist ideology based on ‘Asian values’ is loaded with contradictions. The work points to the similarities between Western and Asian leaders and episodes in history, including links between fascist and democratic figures in Asian and Western history. Such comparisons provoke us to question if ‘Asian values’ are unique after all, if ‘Asian values’ are liberating and democratic, or if authoritarianism and oppression form part of Asian values. Text Tiles, I suggest, begs a critical reflection of the fiction of Asian values that has been propagated in Malaysia and encourages us to recognise the symmetries and sharedness of people and cultures in the construction of history. As with the Migrants series, Text Tiles highlights the contribution of the variety of people who have helped shape Malaysian society. This includes migrants from all places, and those Malaysians who have adopted Western and even globalized forms of cultural practice in their everyday lives in Malaysia, Asia and the world. Moreover, the disarticulation of Asian values in Text Tiles might also be regarded as a kind of symbolic dissimulation of Vision 2020, since the two are bound up with each other in the figure of the ‘truly Asian Bangsa Malaysian’, which Wong deconstructs in Text Tiles. Wong’s artistic acts of dissimulation and his emphasis on the interculturality between political figures in world history, I argue, highlight conjunctures between intra- and inter-Asian differences and also inter-West/Asia differences, and in turn, reveal the artificiality and problems with generalized constructions of race. In doing so, Asian values are also revealed as the counterpart to multiculturalism in Vision 2020, both articulations of the neoliberal racial governmentality of the Malaysian and Singaporean developmental states (see Introduction, this volume).

Tracing roots/routes and different skins Just as unmapping and remapping the idea of Asia has been a continuing theme throughout Wong’s oeuvre, so too have the processes of unmasking and masking race at the intra-Asian level. Continuing an interest in the exploration of cultural difference through plant materials – as in Lalang (1987), diPULAUkan/Exile Islands (1998), the Migrants series, and Poison (2000) – in the installations Non- Indigenous Skins (1998–2000) (see Figure 11.6) and Indigenous Skins (1999) (see Figure 11.7), Wong investigates issues of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous ethnicity and culture, and more specifically, what is indigenous and what is non- indigenous but naturalized to Malaysia. Echoing anthropologist James Clifford’s exploration of cultural mobility via the trope of the root/route, Wong explores the parallel between the cultural ‘roots’/‘routes’ of plants and people, as well as their ‘re-rooting’ and ‘trans-plantation’ across cultural contexts. This is suggestive not only of ‘roots’ (arboreal and/or cultural) and ‘routes’ (as pathways), but also of the verb to ‘rout’. In Clifford’s use of the trope, there is an attempt to convey a sense of identity that is about ‘mobility’ and ‘migration’ as opposed to those conceived as ‘fixity’ or ‘rootedness’. As he explains

Dwelling was understood to be the local ground of collective life, travel a supplement; roots always precede routes. But what would happen … if travel The art of race 207 were untethered, seen as a complex spectrum of human experiences? Practices of displacement might emerge as constitutive of cultural meanings rather than as their simple transfer or extension … Cultural centres, discrete regions and territories, do not exist prior to contacts, but are sustained through their appropriating and disciplining the restless movements of people and things. (Clifford 1997: 3)

Like the Migrants series, the installations Indigenous Skins and Non-Indigenous Skins convey a sense of such cultural migrations, intermixing, assimilation, and transformation. These latter installations are yet again concerned with issues of racialized identity in relation to geographic location and trans/location, cultural movement and emplacement. While the Migrants series remembers old hybridities like the Peranakans and the connection between race and class that are being forgotten in Vision 2020, the Skins installations are attempting to propose new ethnicities that engage rather than suppress difference. In this sense, they are yet again a counter to and critique of the anti-racialization strategies central to Vision 2020. Mutations of race and culture are not only conveyed in these installations at the human biological level by exploring facial phenotypes and the trope of skin, but are also suggested through the specific arboreal migrations and transformations of non- indigenous plants such as chilli, papaya, tea, and tobacco. As Wong explains:

The migration of plants from one part of the world to another [occurred] through colonization and trade. Like the migration of people, the plants become adopted in a new home … In the new countries and cultures, these plants assume new identities … used sometimes so strongly that they become ‘indigenised’, or ‘naturalised’ … Often what we assume as ‘indigenous’ and ‘authentic’ is actually not so authentic after all. Hence, the seeking of authenticity, purity in ethnic groups, nations and culture can be quite meaningless as culture migrates, become hybridized, and is in a constant state of flux. (quoted in Hou 2002: 12)

Specifically, these installations reveal Wong’s fascination with the authority of identities assumed at face value. As the artist explains, ‘Faces are the first thing we look at when we talk about race’ (Mandal 2000: 13). Adopting the motif of skin, Wong has created an array of masks or face fragments made from the skins of various plant materials. For each installation, a separate set of masks was formed from the skins of various indigenous and non-indigenous fruits and plants of Malaysia, revealing the complex histories and migrations of their individual species and playing on the historical relationship between botany, taxonomy, and scientific studies of race. By way of example, chillies, papayas, tapioca and tea are plants non-indigenous to Malaysia but, since their importation, they have been grown locally and ‘naturalized’. In this process, what was once foreign to Malaysian culture has been adapted and integrated thoroughly into Malaysian cultural life, much like the Malaysian hybrid identity of Peranakans. By contrast, the partial faces that comprise Indigenous Skins are made of the skins of indigenous plant 208 M. Antoinette

Figure 11.6 Wong Hoy Cheong, Non-Indigenous Skins, 1998–2000. such as starfruit, water apple, banana, mango and coconut. These two sets of skins are displayed alongside each other in glass cases, much like botanical specimens viewed in the historical collections of a museum. Ironically, the skin casts that were moulded for the Non-Indigenous Skins series were cast from the heads of Indigenous Malaysians using non-indigenous but naturalized Malaysian plants. In Indigenous Skins, just like the plants from which the ‘skins’ of their faces have been cast, the nine Malaysian models Wong selected to cast his masks were of hybrid affiliation, including children of mixed ethnicities The art of race 209

Figure 11.7 Wong Hoy Cheong, Indigenous Skins, 1999. and those who had experienced multiple spiritual attachments through religious conversion (Mandal 2000: 12). As such, the installations point to the complexity of Malaysian identity and suggest the multiplicity and hybridity of contemporary ‘Malaysian’ subjectivity. They encourage a critique of fixed notions of racialized identity, origin and location by use of both indigenous and non-indigenous materials. Moreover, they are a play on the ambiguousness of race as it is embodied and marked on the human face and its skin. Through a study of race as biological phenotype, the Skins series prompts us to question how cultural factors such as 210 M. Antoinette ethnicity and religion are suggested by the genetics of bone structure, skin colour, eye and lip shapes, and other facial markers and, with reference to the Malaysian cultural context, asks, how do facial markers – especially that of skin – suggest and separate ‘indigenous’ Malay (Bumiputera) and ‘non-indigenous’ (Chinese, Indian, and Other) peoples? Moreover, how to define those of mixed ethnicity through the face alone? In proposing such questions, the Skins series may not only be dissimulating Vision 2020 but deliberately attempting to put forth new ethnicities constructed from partial, interculturated and transplanted identities. In this sense, the works illustrate Stuart Hall’s vision for a

new cultural politics which engages rather than suppresses differences and which depends, in part, on the cultural construction of new ethnic identities, [based on a] decoupl[ing] of ethnicity as it functions in the dominant discourse, from its equivalence with nationalism, imperialism, racism and the states. (Hall 1992: 257)

Significantly, it is only by reading the accompanying labels for these installations that the ethnic affiliation of the models is known. The sculptured heads alone reveal nothing clear about racial identification or their plant species. Across all three installations the viewer is deprived of the visceral pleasure of identifying the original faces behind the amusing plant-masks. In a substitution of the typology of people for a typology of plants, these wonderful heads are instead presented as ‘the faces’ of unidentifiable individuals. The artistic act provokes a questioning of cultural authenticity at the skin surface and raises the question, ‘Are these people being classified like the plants?’ Other than clues to their indigenous or non-indigenous affiliations, the faces represented in Non-Indigenous Skins and Indigenous Skins are peculiarly absent. Denied the opportunity to identify these faces, we are forced to search for other clues in the installation which might inform us of the identity and location of the people behind these masks. The most obvious clues to the identification of these people is perhaps the plant-masks themselves. However, the fact that these plants are found both within and outside Malaysia makes it difficult to ascertain any singular ‘origin’ or ‘root’ for each face represented. Indeed, the fascination behind the head masks lies principally in their ability to convey an ambiguous sense of identity, encouraging the viewer to recognise these faces as belonging to almost any body from any place. In this sense, I argue, Wong not only shows how skin comes to be made meaningful in different ways but, also, how it serves as both a restrictive and permeable mask of signification. The artist’s installations make obvious how skins are fetishized in such a way that they are assumed to contain identity and more precisely Malayness, Chineseness, religiousness, indigeneity and more. However, they also show the mask of skin to be a paradoxical ‘site in which the desire for identification and the impossibility of identity is played out’ (Ahmed and Stacey 2001: 10). Indeed, Wong’s Skins series urge us to consider how our encounters with others take place at the level of the body, as well as how skin performs a peculiar interplay of containing and exposing the subject, ‘paradoxically protect[ing] us The art of race 211 from others and expos[ing] us to them’ (Cataldi 1993: 145; see also Antoinette 2007 for these arguments, in relation to the art of Mella Jaarsma). Hence, at the same time as Wong’s Skins series mask the racial background of the model, they also encourage us to experience ‘another skin’. Throughout this process, we might consider questions such as: what might it be like to inhabit and to move in another’s skin? Does taking residence in another body create an alter-native subjectivity? In adopting the skin of another, can skin become comfortable shelter or is it always an altogether foreign experience? Is skin a porous interface for movements of intercultural communication or an impermeable barrier to passages for intercultural dialogue? In a waning tolerance for multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies, these questions are paramount.

Conclusion In the last decade Malaysian society has continued to grapple with its national histories, continuities, and futures of cultural diversity as it strives to meet the hopes of a Vision 2020 – a Malaysian nationhood which transcends issues of race and tends instead towards the co-existence of multi-cultures in one Bangsa Malaysia. Against this backdrop, artist Wong Hoy Cheong may be regarded as a new type of ‘postcolonial actor’ (Goh and Holden, Introduction to this volume) who, through his visual art practice, attempts to negotiate the colonial legacies of racialization in Malaysia so as to propose new forms of critical postcolonial multiculturalism which move towards a renewed social vision of critical, multi-ethnic Malaysian belonging. Indeed, in relation to the overall themes of this volume, Wong’s art presents an argument about how state multiculturalism in contemporary Malaysia accords with and repeats colonial legacies of racializations, racisms and racial cultures. Through this mode of political commentary in art, Wong’s art disarticulates racial governmentality by making explicit the postcolonial state’s inheritance, adaptation, and instrumentalization of colonial racial ideologies and constructs, and invites us to recognize the repetition of these historical racializations in contemporary Malaysia. Beyond this, Wong’s art also suggests new postcolonial, vernacular multiculturalisms which blur the state’s coding of race in terms of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others, and moves instead toward the formation of new cultural hybrids and new ethnicities of ‘transethnic solidarity’ (Mandal 2004). In doing so, it reveals the Malaysian state’s necessary erasure of particular multicultural, especially pre-colonial, pasts and of postcolonial pluralisms, and its valorization of specific vernacular multiculturalisms which accord with the state’s ideological position (such as the institutionalization of Malay primacy, ketuanan Melayu; Ting, Chapter 2 this volume). Wong’s wide popularity amongst the variety of cultural groups in Malaysia (and his general support by the state) – despite being from an ethnic Chinese background, and not of the hitherto privileged Malay and/or Islamic groups – may suggest a new neoliberal multiculturalism in Malaysia, which is linked not only to the vision of a more culturally inclusive Bangsa Malaysia but also to a broader 212 M. Antoinette transnational, cosmopolitan logic linked to developmental state participation in neoliberal capitalism. Indeed, Wong is also a highly acclaimed international artist who has often ‘represented’ Malaysia in major international exhibitions, participating in global art economies of international capital and culture. Through the routes of his international career one might also argue that he has helped forge a kind of transnational, cosmopolitan identity embedded in postcolonial multicultural roots of a more organic and hybrid ‘Malaysian’ composition. In my analysis of Wong’s art I have sought to reveal how Wong’s artistic approach, technique, method and philosophy contribute to new forms of critical postcolonial multiculturalism which, in turn, enable a more complex engagement with cultural difference in Malaysia. I have examined the artist’s engagement with themes of racial governmentality, interculturality and new ethnicity in Malaysia’s multi-cultural context and shown how Wong’s art not only deconstructs and shows the ill-effects of racialization, but also provokes ideas about the problems with anti-racialization as well as how we might live with race critically. Wong’s visual interrogations of Malaysia’s multicultural history ask us to reflect critically on forms of racial governmentality that seek to either privilege, contain, marginalize or suppress particular racial groups at the expense of others. On the one hand, Wong’s art might be described as an attempt to reveal the artifice of race and thereby, ‘undo race visually’ (Mandal 2000: 10–13). On the other hand, it inadvertently proposes different Malaysian identities based on a recognition of pre-colonial and intercultural histories and the formation of new ethnicities. Looking to the past, Wong’s art questions the social construction of ‘race’ so as to reassess the authority of taken-for-granted colonial histories (based on race) and the identities we attach to them; looking to the future, it incites us to remember Malaysia’s racially composite society and its intercultural histories so as to recall critical histories of race, to question notions of racial authenticity, and to move towards new practices of critical multiculturalism, enabling a more complex engagement with cultural difference in Malaysia. In short, Wong’s art uncovers how experiences of migration, diasporicity, cultural displacement and Otherness are central to Malaysia’s history and, consequently, also suggests that recalling Malaysia’s hybrid pasts should be paramount in forging critical multicultural visions for Malaysia’s future.

Notes 1 I offer warm thanks to the artist, Wong Hoy Cheong, for giving generously of his reflections, time and assistance since the beginning of my research and writing on contemporary Malaysian art. Thanks also to Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, for providing assistance with illustrations. All illustrations are reproduced with permission of Wong Hoy Cheong and Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur. All errors and misinterpretations are, of course, my own. Conclusion Toward a critical multiculturalism

Daniel P.S. Goh

We began the book by proposing that the common colonial experience shared by Malaysia and Singapore in British Malaya has had an important impact on the postcolonial multiculturalism in the two countries. A key legacy is the racial governmentality of the colonial state, which organized the melding, hybridizing and multiplying ethnic landscapes of Malaya with the racial grid of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others. As all the essays have shown, this grid has remained consistent and integral to the workings of government after the departure of the British coloni- als and has a strong impact on local identities as well as on vernacular practices. Indeed, the racial grid, cast as multiracialism by the respective UMNO-led and PAP governments in the postcolonial era, is the foundation of national identity on both sides of the Straits of Johor. But while it may have served well as the basis of progressive nation-building and the social compact balancing competing interests in the postcolonial era, it is evident that the racial grid has become a divisive trap and support for rigidified ethnic sentiments undermining multiracialism or any broader efforts at promoting multiculturalism in the past two decades. Holden sums up the situation today in both countries succinctly: ‘yesterday’s tactical solutions have become today’s strategic problem’. In hindsight, as Holden shows in his critical reading of proto-nationalist and nationalist literature, this inheritance seems almost inevitable because the emergent national elites who were constructing new national imaginations had to do it within the framework of colonial governmentality, their voices already compartmental- ized by the racial grid. This was especially so for the Straits-born Chinese and Indian elites who had no recourse to Malay annals, myths and legends and were, instead, compelled to invent a diasporic Malayan identity within the cultural framework provided by British colonialism. The other alternative was the socialist imaginary, which was held by many of the elites whose political position I have termed ‘strategic radical’ in my essay. Importantly, this was a multiculturalist faction comprising members from practically every ethnic group in Malaya. But their defeat in the politics of decolonization meant that the socialist imaginary with its strong transethnic ideology dissipated and it exists now largely in the pages of history books. But even their existence in history is not spared the iron grip of the racial grid. Ting shows that the MCP and diverse socialist groups are marked in official 214 D.P.S. Goh Malaysian history textbooks as Chinese, while I point out that the socialists have been marked as Chinese-speaking Chinese in official Singaporean history. We are not questioning the fact that the left was Chinese-dominated, but we are pointing out that the racialization of the left veils the reality of its multicultural composition and transethnic ideology and credits the victorious conservative elites with championing the multiracialism suitable for the new nation imagined as wrecked by natural racial divisions. In this sense, state multiculturalism in both countries does not erase specific vernacular identities; but rather preserves and disciplines these identities within the racial grid and enacts historical erasure of different, radical visions of multiculturalism that attempt to subvert or transcend the racial grid. The difference between Malaysia and Singapore lies in the Malay nationalist imagination of Malaya as the ancestral land of the Malays. Significantly, this was a constitutional fiction promoted by the British for colonial rule in the Peninsular states and the recovery of Malay history by scholarly British officials accompanied it. This colonial imagination of Malaya became the basis of ketuanan Melayu, which, Ting argues, remains as a cornerstone of UMNO ideology, with the multiracialism discourse providing rhetorical dressing to hide the fact that the Barisan Nasional alliance with other ethnic parties is built upon improvisational bargaining centred on ketuanan Melayu. Together with the explicit racialization of the left, the seeping of ketuanan Melayu discourse into historical textbooks indicates the fraying and tearing of the multiracial dressing. The implication is not that we need to recover the multiracial dressing so that the improvisational politics would not become full-blown ethnic politics with all the emotive dangers associated with it. Instead of sweeping the issues under the rhetorical carpet again, we need to rethink the very definition of multiracialism in the constitution of the Malaysian nation. Singapore is not all that different, in that the PAP leaders, initially allied with the socialist imaginary as strategic radicals, gradually turned away to a position closer to the UMNO position of cultural and political dominance of the majority ethnic group within formal multiracialism. Neo-Confucianism is, however, a different ideological species from the perniciously ethnocratic ketuanan Melayu, because neo-Confucianism is constructed, as I have shown, to be transcultural and has therefore been worked into state multiculturalism as the technocratic vantage point from which the racial grid is to be managed. Neo-Confucianism explicitly rejects Chinese primacy though it taps into the sentiments of traditional Chinese high culture. Unlike in Malaysia, state multiculturalism in Singapore is not rhetorical dressing for improvisational racial politics but the very grounds for closely managed racial politics and disciplined ethnic identities. What we conclude from the close interrogation of the relationship between colonial racial governmentality and postcolonial multiculturalism is that the former sets up the racial grid for the latter and, through a series of discursive processes, compels the development of political identities through the grid according to the cultural logic of the colonial discourse concerning the majority racial category – Malays in Malaysia, Chinese in Singapore. This colonial heritage accounts for both the strong similarities of state multiculturalism in both countries and also for the key differences, not withstanding the complexities and contingencies of Conclusion 215 ethnic identifications – the heterogeneous and competing identities of Chineseness, Malayness and, also, being Muslim, as Khoo argues – in each country. Either way, the differently evolved state multiculturalism is today’s strategic problem for both nations. In Malaysia, the racial grid can no longer confine the politics of ethnic distribution of resources and opportunities to improvisational closed-door deliberations by the elites and becomes the problematic basis for the racialization of open democratic politics. In Singapore, the racial grid achieves ever deeper inscriptions on the lived reality of the citizens, producing cultural contradictions as racial governmentality meets hybridizing globalization. Despite the similarity of pronouncements for a new national identity admitting of cosmopolitan multiculturalism in the early 1990s in both countries, the divergence between Malaysia and Singapore has grown considerably since 1997. Though Singapore had the head start, both developmental states were faced with the new contingencies of globalizations after the end of the Cold War. A form of neoliberal multiculturalism began to take root in the public imagination of the ruling elites of the two countries, but it was only in Singapore that it was successfully articulated, thus far, with the racial governmentality of postcolonial multiculturalism. As Poon shows in her chapter, the old racial grid is not erased by the new cosmopolitanism espoused by the state, but is deployed to take advantage of the opportunities in East Asia, particularly in China, and to meet exigent economic needs for cheap and skilled labour. In this articulation, race becomes the symbolic vehicle for embodying the specific cultural skills that are deemed as crucial to the seizing of capitalist opportunities in East Asia (Chinese high culture) and for representing the price and quality of immigrant labour needs (light-skinned ‘foreign talent’ versus dark-skinned ‘foreign workers’). The biological naturalism and cultural essentialism of the old racial grid remain but are now activated to meet the challenges of globalization. Thus, the racial grid has now achieved a greater significance than simply being used as symbolic currency for nation-building and national identity. Postcolonial multiculturalism has become a specific kind of neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore. Generally speaking, neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore follows the logic of Asian developmental statism. Unlike neoliberal multiculturalism in Latin American states characterized by ‘dependency’, neoliberal multiculturalism in Singapore does not deflect the class struggle by narrowly defining minority rights as the recognition of indigenous culture, but colours class differences with the old racializations so that the sharpening class hierarchy is naturalized as anchored in inherent and immutable racial differences. Rather than deflecting class inequalities and placing them outside the bounds of political deliberations over minority cultural rights, this Singapore-style ‘Asian’ neoliberal multiculturalism situates class inequalities in the racial grid and makes the very notion of minority rights su- perfluous, since all existing ethnic cultures are reconfigured as functional tools for the new economy. This supports a view of neoliberal multiculturalism as a flexible multiculturalism adapted to the exigencies of race and class in the local context. The general principle is that race is now decoupled from capitalist exploitation, as an axis of capitalist relations, and is turned into cultural packages to be exploited 216 D.P.S. Goh for globalizing capitalism, whether directly as exotic commodities or indirectly as ideological tools and possibly both simultaneously. The counterpart, thus, of the economically productive racialization in Singapore is the gratifying consumption of old racial stereotypes rendered as positive attributes in the new cosmopolitan fantasy of state multiculturalism, as Tan’s discussion of Singaporean films shows. Alternatively, the old racial stereotypes are recast as social backdrops to the struggle of the cosmopolitan protagonist against traditional ethnic and cultural parochialisms, as Gabrielpillai’s analyses of internationally recognized Singaporean literary and televisual productions show. Either way, the old racializations are made to serve the new project of state multiculturalism to foster the idealized cosmopolitan subject, whom both Gabrielpillai and Tan, though they used different theoretical approaches, conclude to be the Chinese-Singaporean – the privileged majority whose anxieties concerning globalization are heightened by the state’s intensified education and cultural programmes targeting them – in new guises. As both authors show respectively, these anxieties are displaced onto representations of Malay buffoonery and Indian hyper-sexuality. It has become a different story in Malaysia. The Bangsa Malaysia vision has collapsed under the weight of heightened racial politics that have taken on a strong religious gloss. This could be traced back to the critical juncture of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, when the ruling elites took the defensive route of retreating from neoliberal capitalism. In this context, the difference between the development of state multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore from the same racial governmentality mattered. The improvisational character of the racial politics based on the Malay-Chinese-Indian-Others grid, while it allowed the Malay leadership to make compromises with non-Malay interests and keep the ketuanan Melayu discourse in check in the early years, now entailed the reverse in which both the ketuanan Melayu and Wahhabi Islamist discourses are allowed into mainstream politics to contain rising Malay dissent against the Malay elites who have been the main beneficiaries of the bumiputra policies, but at a heavy cost to the improvisational racial politics of compromise. Thus, the Malaysian chapters can be read as complementing each other and forming a narrative of contrast to the Singapore case. The recent return of ketuanan Melayu discourse in historical representations, mapped by Ting, is closely intertwined with what Khoo sees as the increasing fundamentalist Islamic character of elite cultural censorship of multiculturalist views of Malayness in the controversy over Yasmin Ahmad’s films. The intertwining of ketuanan Melayu and ketuanan Islam is materially consequential for Indian-Malaysians who, in the intersections of race, religion and class, have been marginalized in Malaysia’s rapid post-1969 development. The Hindraf protest movement expresses the worsening marginalization as Malaysia tackles neoliberal globalization in stops and spurts and Devadas shows discursive evidence of religio-racialization in both affirmative responses and counter-responses to the movement – the intertwined Islamist ketuanan Melayu discourse appears to beget an Indian-Hindu rights response. On the other hand, the internationally acclaimed art of Wong Hoy Cheong, his hybridizing images a prime candidate for expressing the imagined Bangsa Conclusion 217 Malaysian subject, as Antoinette shows, has minimal impact on political and cultural discourse in Malaysia. One may even argue that Wong’s art would serve Malaysia’s own form of neoliberal multiculturalism, where old racial markers are combined with a strong sense of a convergence of histories and amalgamated to produce the cosmopolitan hybrid Malaysian subject. If so, this neoliberal multiculturalism looks more liberating than it is exploitative in the Singapore case, partly because it would mark a move away from an Islamist ketuanan Melayu discourse, but also because it would be closer to a critical multiculturalism than the Singapore state’s racialist instrumentalization of multiculturalism to re-privilege the English- speaking Chinese-Singaporean. One may also catch a glimpse of Wong’s strange and attractively grotesque hybridizing images in the strange alliance of PAS and DAP held together by Parti Keadilan Rakyat helmsmanship in the recent watershed elections. But only time will tell whether the opposition alliance’s vision of an alternative multiculturalism will create a truly cosmopolitan Bangsa Malaysian subject or reveal itself to be yet another rhetorical cover for the improvisational politics of racial compromises that merely exist under a different name with different players having the same racial masks. What shape could and should a critical multiculturalism take in Malaysia and Singapore? One thing is for certain: we are not short of exemplary cultural producers who have engaged our racialized histories to build new imaginations of a society where race does not disappear – because it would be naïvely fantasti- cal to think that – but its cultural elements are freed up for hybrid multicultural compositions. The critical factor does not lie in the hybridity of the compositions, as even hybridity may be commodified and instrumentalized for the profit of a small minority in neoliberal capitalism. It also does not lie in the genre of the compositions. The common trait that ties the readings of critical multiculturalism in Goh Poh Seng’s social realist novel (Holden), border-crossing blog responses to the Hindraf effect (Devadas), Yasmin’s romantic films (Khoo), Colin Goh’s satirical TalkingCock (Tan), Fiona Cheong’s post-gothic novel (Gabrielpillai) and Wong’s ‘Third World’ art (Antoinette) is the bricolage process of disarticulating state multiculturalism into its component racial elements and recombining them in counterintuitive fashions that denaturalize racial identities and render them transi- tive; that is, related to each other in multiple ways. In other words, regardless of the genre they work with, these exemplars are bricoleurs who have taken apart the racial grid to produce new multicultural configurations that question the existing racial identities and their arrangement by state multiculturalism. There is, however, one more important dimension. State multiculturalism has been effective because it draws from vernacular identities the cultural energy for the continued working of the racial grid. This has affected the identity practices, racializing the intrinsically hybridizing inter-ethnic interactions that characterize vernacular life. The two chapters on youth music practices, considered together, show that the result is a constant tussle between deghettoization and re-racialization. Fu and Liew and Bal show that minority subcultures, which may have begun as resistance identities for economically and culturally underprivileged Malay and Sikh youths, eventually got ensnared in the racial grid of state multiculturalism 218 D.P.S. Goh – and in Singapore’s neoliberal multiculturalism – in the intersections of the racial grid with globalizing commercial networks. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since it opens up a channel for a critical multiculturalism that engages racialization in order to overcome it, rather than to suspend or disengage from racialization to carve out a defensive, insular, ghettoized space. Deghettoization is positive; the question is how we can prevent or subvert re-racialization when the practices re-territorialize in a new cultural space, when they form new ethnicities. Critical bricolage multiculturalism, as described above, must find a more organic way of connecting to vernacular practices to achieve this. My use of ‘organic’ is a deliberate evocation of Antonio Gramsci’s imagination of the ‘organic intellectual’ working up new practices, and new ethnicities in our case, to seize territory from the cultural state apparatus. Here, the bricoleur recon- nects disarticulated bits of the racial grid to fragments of vernacular life, fashioning new identities that render the racial grid unjust, absurd and unnatural (the social realist, satirical and post-gothic genres respectively), and mark interculturality as both beautiful and grotesque, as in Yasmin’s images of racialized bodies desiring each other or Wong’s skin-masks of native and non-native plants. It is in the hybrid of the beautiful and the grotesque that the immortality of the people, Mikhail Bakhtin once said, is realized. Bibliography

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Abdullah Badawi 115 late 96, 154; millennial 8–9; Acehnese 202 transnational 68, 90; see also adat 107, 111, 118, 119 neoliberalism affirmative action 7, 50, 86, 122 Catholicism 14, 151, 152 Althusser, Louis 21 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 8, 94 ‘anak tiri’ 93 Chatterjee, Partha 6–8, 27, 91 Anderson, Benedict 5 Chinese: as commercial middlemen 5; Anglophone elite 26, 28 Chineseness 22–5, 29, 33 53–69, 72, 73, anti-colonial politics 3, 58 79–81, 110, 112, 129, 143, 147, 170–1, Appadurai, Arjun 5 183–5, 186–7, 210; majoritarian culture Arab 47, 111, 113, 116 3, 7, 8, 73, 154–5, 214, 216; reification ‘Asian Renaissance’ 204 of 31; vernacular schools 54 Asian values 2, 9, 61, 64, 75, 111, 117, Chinese Communist Party 59 130, 203–6 Chinese Development Assistance fund 73 assimilation 68, 85, 131, 160, 202, 207 Chinese educated 57–8, 68, 80, 129–31 Christianity: as a marker of Westernization Bakhtin, Mikhail 14, 55, 218 200; colonial education 151; conversion Bangsa Malaysia 10–11, 39, 92, 122–3, to 1; in the Religious Knowledge 192, 193, 194, 206, 211–12, 216, 217 programme 63 Barisan Nasional (BN) 6, 12, 37, 49, 50, Chua, Beng Huat 2, 54, 72, 158, 176, 177 58, 61, 88, 89, 91, 214 citizenship: ‘ethnically differentiated’ 158, Barisan Sosialis 62 171, 202; flexible 10; Malayan Union Batu Caves 86–7 Plan and 42–45; multicultural 2, 156; Benjamin, Geoffrey 175, 177 naturalization of 43, 44 Bhabha, Homi 8, 13, 14, 54–7, 60, 77, 90, civil liberties 74, 87 110, 153–4 civil society 73, 84, 158 biculturalism 78–81 civil sphere 25; see also public sphere bilingualism 61, 71, 78–81, 112, 164–5 class 9, 10, 23, 26, 27, 34, 48, 57, 75, 77, biopower 64, 75, 83, 92, 169 81, 84, 89, 94, 101, 110, 143–4, 164–5, Brown, David 1, 72 174, 190, 197, 203, 215, 216 Buddhism, in the Religious Knowledge class politics 144 programme 63 Clifford, James 74, 206–7 bumiputera 7, 8, 10, 86, 88–93, 98, 101, code-switching 112, 138, 164 110, 114, 193, 196 colonialism: colonial education 151; bureaucratic elite 62 colonial governance 6, 21, 22; colonial Butler, Judith 108, 115, 116 subjects 5, 25 Comaroff, Jean and John 8, 70, 78 Cantonese 21, 107, 112, 144 communalism 47, 50, 60, 65, 67, 102 capitalism 20, 90–1, 115, 177–8; communist 43, 44, 48, 110 Index 237 communitarianism 7, 9, 54, 60 formalism 20–1, 194 Confucianism 7, 8, 54, 61–8; neo- 54, 111, Foucault, Michel 25, 64, 108, 115, 192 214; pseudo- 204 Furnivall, J.S. 2, 4, 19 consumerism 77 corporal punishment 84 gender 24, 111, 144, 169–70 cosmopolitanism: cosmopolitan pluralism Gilroy, Paul 10, 13, 15, 87, 162, 169, 9, 143; critical 9, 122; dialogic 74; 202–3 subaltern 74 global knowledge economy 70 counter-hegemony 4 globalization 8, 19, 75, 96, 155; corporatist creolization 14, 22, 54, 68, 112 76; of music 157; neoliberal rhetoric of cultural affiliation 3, 117, 191 71 cultural authenticity 22, 81, 111, 113, 138, Goh Keng Swee 61 162, 170, 194, 207, 210, 212 Gramsci, Antonio 132, 218 cultural ballast 61, 80 cultural essentialism 194, 203, 215 Habermas, Jürgen 64, 163 cultural particularism 13 Hainanese 21 cultural politics i, 14, 54, 68, 91, 210 Hall, Stuart 14, 80, 174, 175, 190, 191, cultural stereotypes 5, 161, 162; see also 203, 210 racialization Hebdige, Dick 161, 175 Hefner, Robert 2, 158 Darul Arqam 116 hegemony 3, 4, 7, 37, 41, 53, 54, 68, 71, defamiliarization 20, 23, 26, 28–9, 32 75, 81, 89, 91, 101, 107, 108, 113, 120, deghettoization 162–3 122, 132–4, 193, 202–3 Democratic Action Party (DAP) 12, 36, heritage 22, 40, 77, 126, 147 217 Hindraf 11, 12, 86–8, 93–104, 122, 216, 217 depoliticization of ethnicity 53, 68, 72 Hinduism 86–7, 93, 95, 111; demolition Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka 36, 52 of Hindu temples 11, 86, 92–3; in the diaspora 114, 173, 174, 196, 197 Religious Knowledge programme 63 diversity: cultural 2, 71, 78, 81, 88, 91, 92, Hirschman, Charles 5 124, 158, 211; ethnic 196; linguistic 113 historical fiction 40 division of labour 5, 26, 176 historical unconscious 34 dress 25, 116, 180 Hokkien 21, 58, 62, 107, 112, 126, 131, 132, 137, 184 egalitarianism 26, 74, 77 homeland 40, 73, 176, 181, 182, 197 elitism 60–5, 74 Housing Development Board (HDB) 30 ethnic areas see racialization 31, 32, 33; see also public housing ethnic conflict 2, 48, 89–90 Hugh Clifford 23, 24, 25 ethnic difference i, 2,33, 119, 125 humanism 20, 74, 113, 120 ethnic pluralism 1–2 hybridity 54–7, 77, 171, 217 ethnic riots see race riots ethnic-segmentation 50 ideal types of stereotypes 131–4 ethnocentrism 63–4, 68, 163, 185; non- 3, ideology 54, 110, 174 64 Indian: as comic 107, 128–9; economic ethno-communalism 88, 92 discrimination 100; hyper-sexuality Eurasian 128–9 13, 23, 216; Indian-ness 15, 141, 143, Eurocentrism 74 177–9, 185, 187–190; nationalism 27–8; expatriates 27, 31, 145, 148 rights of 11, 98 indigenity discourse 5, 8, 39, 45, 50, 55, Fanon, Frantz 55, 117, 120, 163 84, 89, 171, 193, 196, 203, 206, 215 Federated Malay States 42, 44 individualization 34 Federation of Malaya Agreement 41–4, 46 inequality 76, 84 femininity 148, 149, 154, 169 intercultural dialogue 3, 13, 211 filial piety 33, 66 interculturality 12–15, 142, 151, 206, 212, foreign labour 46, 71, 76, 81–4 218 238 Index Internal Security Act (ISA) 88, 99, 122 Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army interpellation 33, 70, 144 (MPAJA) 48 Islam: and capitalism 91, 111, 113; and Malayan Spring 5, 28 communism 48; and contestation Malayan Union Plan 38, 40–2, 46, 47, 54 96–7, 113; and conversion 91–2, 96; Malayanization 58 and Malay identity 79, 113, 115, 193; Malayism 37, 39, 44, 49 codification of 116; fundamentalist Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) 6, 216; Islam hadari 91, 115, 122; Islamic 37, 41, 100 governance 39, 91; Islamic state 36, 51; Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) 6, 41, Islamic subject matter in textbooks 36, 93, 100 39, 51; Islamicization 11, 51, 91–2, 111, Mandal, Sumit 14, 58, 113, 191, 203, 204, 113–17, 122, 193, 202; ketuanan Islam 207, 209, 211, 212 11, 13, 39, 41, 122, 193, 216; liberal Mandarin: and Chinese identity politics Islam 119–20; rationalization of 116; 55–63, 79–81, 130–1, 155, 159, 184; Sufi 13, 108–23; Sunni 111; Wahabi Mandarinization 62–9 116, 118, 216 marginalization 11, 15, 21, 128, 161, 164, 174, 177–8, 185, 190, 216 Japanese Occupation 56, 194 market rationalities 75 Javanese 47, 196, 196, 202 Marriage Restriction Policy 83 Jawi 21, 47 Marx, Karl 20, 27, 58 Jews 5, 161 Marxism 20, 27 junzi ‘君子’ 8, 65–6 ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ 9, 65, 66 jus soli 42–3, 46, 89 masculinity 23–4, 54, 65, 148, 149, 161, 169 Kahn, Joel S. 12–13 May Thirteenth see race riots ketuanan Islam 11, 13, 39, 122, 193, 216 melting-pot 72 ketuanan Melayu 7–8, 11, 36–40, 110, merger 6, 125, 159 122, 193, 214, 216–7 meritocracy 72, 177–8, 185, 190 Kristeva, Julia 145–7 metropolitan 1, 19, 26 Kymlicka, Will 2 migration 176, 194–203, 206, 207, 212 Ministry of Manpower 83 Lee Hsien Loong 66, 70, 81 minority 29, 49, 68, 87, 125, 127–8, Lee Kuan Yew 34, 54, 55–58, 67, 79, 80 130–3, 135, 147, 150, 156, 158, 160, legitimacy 36, 38–9, 45, 48, 55, 61, 113, 169, 186, 215, 217 167, 190, 202, 203 modernization 1, 78, 91, 97, 110, 113–14, liberalism 2, 4, 111, 119, 154 158–9 Lim Boon Keng 22, 53, 55, 79, 80 multiculturalism: communitarian 2; critical Lim Cheng Ean 53–4, 55, 58, 67 4, 50, 217–8; neoliberal 10–1, 68, 75, Lim Chin Siong 57, 58, 62, 67 78, 81, 84–5, 122–3, 127, 139–40, 143, Lim Kit Siang 36 154–6, 215–7; postcolonial 2, 4, 139, literary: consciousness 28; production 211–2, 213–5; racialization of 204; state 19–34; text 20–1, 24, 34; voice 26 2–4, 67–9, 211, 214–7; vernacular 4, 15, Liu, Lydia 58, 60 211; Western 1–2

Mahathir Mohamad 10, 36, 51, 91, 97, Nanyang University 61 111, 114, 115, 192, 204, 205 narrative: alternative 72, 84; historical 8, Malabars 202 25, 194, 197; migrant 95; of cultural Malay: Malayness 12, 13, 63, 110, 113–15, loss and recovery 55–6; personal 32; 159–61, 168, 185, 210, 215, 216; racialized 205; realist 13; teleological nationalism 6, 7, 37–9, 47, 49, 50, 51, 36; textbook 39–42 54, 193, 205–6, 214; Panopticon 116, nation building 8–9, 36–7, 61, 68, 72, 121; primacy see ketuanan Melayu 90–1, 213–5 Malayan Communist Party (MCP) 47, 48, National Cultural Congress 193 50, 213 National Day Rally 62, 70, 71, 82, 161 Index 239 National Development Plan 89 private sphere 31, 124, 177, 178, 185 National Front see Barisan Nasional psychoanalysis 142, 155 national identity 9, 44–5, 60, 81, 89–90, public housing 73, 77, 166 177, 202, 213, 215 public sphere 25, 31, 34, 124, 163, 170, national ideology 71, 100 177, 178, 185, 190 National Ideology Legislation 9 Punjabi 15, 126, 173–190 nationalism: and racial governmentality PuruShotam, Nirmala 12, 164, 177 7; anti-colonial 6, 7, 26–7; ethnonationalism 1, 121; Indian 27, 28; Quran 101–2, 119, 120 intercultural 144; liberal 154; Malay 7, 37, 38, 39, 47, 50, 51, 54, 89, 214; race relations 86, 88–93, 95, 107, 135 nationalist historiography 14, 22, 192; race riots 6, 7, 49, 86, 89, 100, 192, 193 religious 121; territorial 70 racial classification xi, 3, 5, 6, 22, 29, 82, nation-states 21, 70; postcolonial 87, 88 89, 160, 213–15, 217–18 native 39, 45, 50, 55, 56, 137 racial governmentality 1, 4–8, 10, 12–13, neo-colonialism 7, 19 14–16, 19, 22, 25, 29, 32, 85, 122, 139, neoliberalism 2, 8, 9, 75, 88–9, 92–3, 154; 144, 154, 192, 206, 211, 212, 213–16 neoliberal capitalism 10, 13, 84, 139, racialization 3–6, 8, 11–14, 20, 23, 26, 171, 212, 216–17 28, 31–4, 58, 68, 72, 79, 108, 110, New Economic Policy (NEP) 7, 49–50, 86, 121, 143, 147, 151, 190, 202, 203, 211, 89, 122, 192, 193, 202 214–16, 218; anti- 20, 122, 192, 202–3, new ethnicity 14, 174, 190, 192, 202, 207, 207, 212; deconstruction of 112–13, 210–12, 218 121–2, 211–12, 217–18; of urban space New Villages 47 4; official multiracialism 61, 175, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 179, 189; politics of 192; race-blind 4; 78, 84, 86 ‘racial arithmetic’ 73; racial coding 73, 127–9, 211; racial culture 4, 211; racial Ong, Aihwa 10, 22, 75, 88, 91, 93, 143 discrimination 22, 32, 93–5, 100–1, Orang Asli 44, 45, 111 124, 139, 185, 187; racial essentialism Orientalism 1, 4–5, 15, 31, 114, 154, 205 2, 13, 61, 73, 75, 79, 152, 159–60, 162, Other 22, 38–9, 109, 117, 124–6, 128, 143, 174, 183, 189, 192; racial formations 7, 147, 153, 155, 160, 175, 183–9, 212 19–20; racial politics 100, 143, 203, 214, 216; racial representations 12, 16, 170; P. Uthayakumar 87, 88 racial stereotypes 13, 23, 32, 124–40, Parti Gerakan Rakyat 37 170, 216; re- 217 Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) 11, 12, 37, racism 4, 7, 73, 140, 145, 147–50, 155, 39, 51, 101, 116, 122, 217 174, 187, 202–3, 210–11; anti-racism Parti Keadilan Rakyat 12, 217 10, 72, 77, 202, 203; ‘new racism’ 2, 9; patriarchy 111–12, 146, 148, 152, 170, racist ideology 37; state 87, 93, 94–95, 176 100, 142 Peranakan 12, 22, 47, 53, 112, 117, 196, reformasi 111 199, 200, 207; see also Straits Chinese reification 31, 34, 160, 161, 172 performativity 12, 14, 16 rights: bumiputera 46, 88, 89, 93, 101; Persians 202 citizenship 3, 46, 78, 84; cultural 10, phenotypes 15, 207, 209 84, 215; human 74, 99; Indian-Hindu plural society 4, 19, 22, 25, 27–9, 43, 50 11, 216; liberal 9; migrant 93; minority political economy 5; of the sign 58–60 87, 215; to representation 174, 190; political resistance 14, 55 universal 112 politics of decolonization 3, 68, 213 Rukun Negara 100 politics of recognition 3 Rumi 21 polycentrism 74 postcolonial discourse 56 Sassen, Saskia 70 postcolonial elites 54–5 Second World War 5, 28, 36, 38, 41, 42, poverty 49, 73, 76 48, 144 240 Index secularism 64, 92, 96, 109, 111, 113, 118, Tamil 21, 26, 86–7, 111, 143, 168, 187–9; 119, 122 vernacular schools 53, 94 Sedition Act 87–88 Tanah Melayu 38, 40, 98, 108 semiotics 54, 57–60, 62, 65, 67 Taylor, Charles 3–4, 14, 68, 73 separation 6, 54, 61, 72, 89, 126 technocrat 53, 64, 65, 89, 214 sexuality 81, 118, 128, 130, 142, 143, 144 technological determinism 76 Shariah law 86, 97, 116 Teochew 21, 23, 56 Sikhs 15, 131, 136, 175, 176–9, 217 The Singapore Story 125 Singapore Cricket Club 30, 31, 32 transethnic: belonging 193; Chineseness Singlish 68, 69, 138 68; ideals 7; identifications 68, 141, 144, sinicization 80 192; ideology 213–14; political parties Sixth Malaysia Plan 10 6; solidarity 191, 211 social capital 81 transgression of boundaries 77, 112 social control 84 transnationalism 10, 11, 58, 59, 68, 76, 90, Speak Mandarin Campaign 7, 61–2, 67, 80 120, 142, 143, 154, 155, 156, 191, 212 Spivak, Gayatri 90, 203 Tunku Abdul Rahman 41, 101 Stam, Robert and Shohat, Ella 13, 131–2 state: colonial 2, 5–6, 7, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, United Malay National Organisation 59, 213; developmental 1, 8, 10, 31, 68, (UMNO) 6, 11, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 206, 212, 215; intervention 4, 73, 75; 45, 47, 49, 50, 89, 100, 114, 116, 122, postcolonial 7, 68, 98, 114, 211 213, 214 Straits Chinese 7, 8, 22–9, 53–4, 79, 197; see also Peranakan vernacular identities 68, 214, 217 Straits Settlement Legislative Council 79 vernacular schools 46, 53 Strategic Economic Plan 8–9 strategic essentialism 203 Wawasan 2020 10, 122 subaltern 12, 62, 94, 163, 184 Wong Kan Seng 82 subcultural identity 15, 170 subculture 158–171, 184, 217 Žižek, Slavoj 90–1, 149