Tracing Trajectories (Singapore Literature Symposium Summary)

Tracing Trajectories (Singapore Literature Symposium Summary)

Cheryl Julia Lee
English, School of Humanities
Nanyang Technological University

Thank you, again, Theo, Yulia, Dan Feng, and Annaliza for such a lively panel! With that, we have reached the end of the Singapore Literature Symposium. Theo and I would like to take the opportunity to offer some closing remarks. Firstly, we would like to reiterate our thanks to everyone who helped to make this event possible. NTU School of Humanities has offered immense support: thank you, in particular, to the Chair of the School of Humanities, Professor Neil Murphy; our Head of English, Graham Matthews; our Head of Administration, Ann-Marie Chua; Assistant Manager, Cheryl Cheong; as well as members of the IT department. We would also like to thank all our Chairs and Speakers for their participation as well as their kind understanding as we negotiated several last-minute changes due to the pandemic. And of course, thank you to everyone who joined us for the symposium!

This weekend, we had some stimulating discussions across the five panels on the state of Singapore literature in English today. I think I speak on Wan-ling and Theo’s behalf when I say that it has been a privilege to participate in these conversations, which brought together academics, writers, artists, and translators in our panels; as well as publishers, editors, critics, and students who joined us as part of the audience. As Prof. Wee noted in his opening remarks, this symposium sets out to examine what constitutes a contemporary Singapore literature in English and to take stock of the directions and concerns that this literature has taken since independence.

A key pertinent issue raised in the first panel was the way in which the nation-building project after independence was—and continues to be—intertwined with matters of territory and locality. Dr. Shirley Chew spoke about Singaporean writers as part of a larger community of ‘commonwealth’ writers, later postcolonial writers; while Isa Kamari discussed the loss of space and culture in relation to the Malay, Orang Laut, and Orang Seletar communities. Along the same vein, Dr. Angelia Poon sought to recuperate women writers of the 1980s for critical discourse on nation building in this period: she presented on their negotiation of the country’s governing principle of pragmatism, which saw the working woman made a convenient scapegoat in national rhetoric. All three speakers also discussed a marked attempt to construct a coherent national space in literature produced during the period immediately following independence.

This is an issue that continued well through to the 2010s. Our second panel consisting of Dr. Alvin Pang, Ann Ang, and Aaron Lee offered us a thought-provoking look into the HDB and the heartland as a contested space that both reinforces and resists the imperatives of national development. This tension within the space was discussed in terms of the Gothic, and its relationship to nostalgia. The panel also discussed the fraught relationship between nature and the urban, which is foregrounded in the image of Singapore as a Garden City, a City in a Garden, and a Biophilic City. Dr. Pang and Aaron also reflected on the process of putting together No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry, which attempts to capture the dynamic interplay between people and places caught in the throes of a new urban reality, wrought within one generation of independence. The anthology traced the development of the idea of the city as one determined by loss, to one involving coming to terms with the urban as a fact of life and not replacing the rural, to finally a new way of looking at the city in the 2000s as a thoroughly modern and urban space that does not begin from a sense of loss.

In the panels on contemporary Singapore writing in English, we see this project of rethinking territory and locality persisting, especially in light of increasing globalization and connectivity. In the panel titled, New Fictions, we had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Balli Kaur Jaswal and Dr. Sharlene Teo reflect on their creative practice and speak about their relationship to Singapore—the idea of Singapore—as writers; as well as the need to write their way out of Anglo-American bias. In the panel titled, New Movements, Stephanie Chan spoke about how the spoken word scene connects local poets to a wider international community. Steph, Marylyn Tan, and Nabilah Said also spoke on the significance of building artistic communities.

A related idea raised during the symposium is that of translation as an imperative. Isa Kamari noted in the first panel that despite the thriving Malay literary scene, writing in English tends to dominate critical discourse. We discussed the necessity of translation, a topic which was picked up in the last panel, New Tongues, where we heard from Theo, Yulia Endang, Tan Dan Feng, and Annaliza Bakri. This panel noted that language carries within it entire realities and histories. Given this, they considered the cost of having English as the dominant language in Singapore and the idea of translation as a means of dialogue promoting states of co-existence. Dan Feng also suggested that translation is not the solution and urged Singaporeans to take advantage of our status as a multicultural and multilingual society and work to avail ourselves of the riches of literatures in other languages.

Writing in English has, however, clearly expanded beyond concerns with nation-building; interest in identity questions have also broadened and taken on more dimensions including race, gender, and sexuality. An issue that emerged as particularly relevant to Singaporean writers in English today is the desire to articulate the diversity of experiences afforded to someone born in or living in Singapore. As Marylyn, Thiam Chin, Nabilah, and Steph pointed out earlier today, the category of Singapore literature has been complicated by cross-pollination such that the category has evolved from one determined by geographical boundaries to something more nebulous and hence, more inclusive. This blurring of boundaries also extends to aesthetic form as writers take a greater interest in formal innovations and multidisciplinary work, with individuals often wearing several hats as artists, writers, performers, arts organizers, etc.

In the last three panels on contemporary writing in English, our panellists also spoke about a greater interest in broader questions about art in relation to legitimacy and institutionalization; in relation to consumption trends and the risks of commercialization; as well as what Marylyn referred to as the radical pleasure involved in making art. They also articulated a greater desire for collaboration and for the democratization of art.

There is much to reflect upon, and it will probably take some to sift through everything and consolidate our thoughts. I will now put Theo on the spot and ask him to offer some reflections on the weekend and the image of contemporary Singapore writing in English that emerged over the past two days as a way of bringing this symposium to a close. Theo, please.

(Delivered 9th May 2021, published 9th June 2021)

Lee, Cheryl Julia. “Tracing Trajectories (Singapore Literature Symposium Summary).” Singapore Literature Symposium, 8-9 May 2021, Web. Closing Remarks. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/soh/research/singapore-studies/sls-2021-tracing-trajectories.