By Priyadarshini

Living with Myths Beginning is the third instalment of the Living with Myth series which serves to deconstruct and re-examine the “truths” that we have been living with our entire lives in Singapore. I was personally interested in this as I am a History major, but also because I believe that there is single historical narrative. Instead history is personal and can be interpreted in many ways.

In this instalment, there were 3 speakers – Huang Jianli, Seng Guo Quan and Lee Kah Wee. Huang Jianli discussed the myth of “rags to riches” and deconstructed the narrative of Singapore going from third to first world country by examining the Nanyang Diaspora. Seng Guo Quan re-examined the notion that merger was the means to a battle against communists and communist sympathizers. Lee Kah Wee discussed the integrated resorts as a physical representation of the contradictions of the “consistency” of the government. I will concentrate on the Huang Jianli and the discussions after the sharing as they are the most relevant to our module!

Huang Jianli was really interesting in his sharing as he very neatly deconstructed the myth of the “rags to riches”. A myth usually perpetuates itself or is perpetuated in society for many reasons such as popularization by the public due to the emotional connection to the notion or state appropriation for the celebration of the state.

Looking more closely into state appropriation, he talked about how in the state narratives, the beginning (third world) and end (first world) are emphasized but there are insufficient details in between. That is, a lot of the crisis and hardship that people go through are forgotten in this broad macro linear structure of looking at history. A good poem that we discussed in lecture in relation to this would be “The Planners” by Boey Kim Cheng, as he provides a very contrasting and bleak representation of development as opposed to the “third world to first world” approach that the government utilizes. We always hear of the great successes of Singapore, but often the pain and discomfort that come with development (as represented by the dental and hard images in the poem and the defamiliarization through the formality of the poem) and its impact on the society is left out in nation building.

In addition to this, he also mentioned how there has been suppression of alternative narratives and suggested that there is space for both the myths and alternative stories in the understanding of our history. This is also relevant to the view that history can be personalized and how this resonates in literature, as the works of the different poets and writes of Singapore tell the different stories of the different facets of Singapore/Malayan society; just like how we looked at the differences of the poems of Edwin Thumboo, Arthur Yap and Lee Tzu Pheng in our previous lecture. Their poems are influenced by the different experiences of their lives and look at society in different aspects. For example, Edwin Thumboo focuses on the grandeur of Singapore’s modernity while Arthur Yap looks at the lives of the people through his observations re-presented in his poems. Thus, the sharing by Huang Jianli was relevant and interesting in relation to the poems and discussions that we have had in class.

During the discussions after the sharing by the 3 speakers, there were a number of questions on the “space” available to Singaporeans to have access to alternative views or to engage in conversations on alternative views (such as the event itself). There was also a question of understanding history from ground up instead of from top down, through gaining new insight on the experiences and feelings of the citizens. This was in light of the banning of Tan Pin Pin’s documentary by the MDA on terms that “the film’s contents “undermine national security” and distort the legitimate actions of security agencies as acts that victimise innocent individuals” *.

The speakers suggested looking at oral archives and pictures as they are very representative of the situation during the time period of pre-independence to independence. I would like to add to that by saying that I think literature produced during the time is also extremely relevant in understanding what life was like in the past. In our module, we also have been doing a thematic approach to history, narrowing into different facets of history – development, merger, colonialism and even Malayan dreams (of the people rather than of the government). This has enabled us to see, not only one point of view, but many viewpoints that are influenced by differing experiences of the many writers.

With that said, I believe that while there is scope, this space is limited. As we discussed during our first tutorial in this module, a lot of times these “national collections” or “national histories” are limited by government regulations and this is a setback to the uncovering of many unknown stories that also play an important part in shaping our society to be what it is today.

I really enjoyed this event and do recommend the subsequent instalments to those interested in re-discovering the narratives that we have never questioned, and perhaps begin to understand that there is no “Truth” but just many different truths that are just as important as the other.

*See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/singaporeans-arrive-johor-baru-screening-documentary-sin#sthash.lFPCMz0e.dpuf