Silence and Sound
Nanyang Technological University English Graduate Research Symposium
4-5th October 2024
Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan (SHHK) Building
48 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639818
Speculative Fiction
Day 1, 17 February | 1.45PM - 3.15PM
Moderator: Amrita Iyer
1 Alabanda
Kevin Martens Wong
Alabanda
Kevin Martens Wong
'Alabanda' is a speculative-fiction story focusing on the struggles of my diasporic mixed creole community, the Kristang / Portuguese-Eurasians of Singapore and Melaka. Multiple waves of dislocation and migration have informed the Kristang identity over the last five centuries: its genesis began in Melaka with the Portuguese conquest of the city in 1511 and mixed marriages between arriving Portuguese soldiers and local Malay residents. My great-great-great-great-grandparents together with many other Portuguese-Eurasians migrated from Melaka to Singapore starting from the 1820s after Singapore was opened up for trade by the British when they took over Singapore in 1819. I myself am a gay Portuguese-Eurasian writer based in Singapore leading a movement to revitalise our heritage language Kristang, and 'Alabanda' draws on yet another subsequent wave of Kristang migration out of Singapore in from the 1960s to the 1980s, following Singapore's independence from the British and the PAP's government marginalisation of the community, to consider more universal experiences of mixed-race and minority members of societies around the world, as well as newer contestations related to sexuality and gender, which I have also struggled with as a prominent member of my community within the country; despite my love for Singapore, I have always had to still keep one eye on the possibility of moving elsewhere. Like me and the protagonist in the short story, therefore, many Eurasians find themselves in perpetual motion and movement; even if this is not physical, it almost certainly psychoemotional, sociocultural and even spiritual, sited as we are by circumstances of our complex, multifaceted identity at the crossroads of multiple affective and spatiotemporal aspects of life. In a sense, therefore, our existence remains in itself a transient, liminal space, with our sense of home always somewhere outside of ourselves — alabanda (‘somewhere over there’), as we might say in Kristang.
Kevin Martens Wong is a gay, non-binary Kristang / Portuguese-Eurasian creole / indigenous independent scholar, speculative fiction writer, and the founder of the internationally-recognised non-profit volunteer grassroots movement to revitalise the critically endangered Kristang language in Singapore, Kodrah Kristang (‘Awaken, Kristang’). His first novel, Altered Straits, was longlisted for the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015 and nominated for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize, and he currently runs his own freelance coaching and consulting initiative known as Merlionsman (merlionsman.com).
The Future is Fluid: Science Fiction-Fantasy Lands in Neon Yang's Tensorate series
Jamie Uy
Since 1967, Singapore has undertaken several ambitious iterations of the “Garden City” planning mission to market itself as a “Clean and Green” nation. Today, the tiny island nation is quickly rising as a global sustainability hub and “Living Laboratory” for urban solutions to climate change. While Singapore’s technocratic environmental policies have been studied by social scientists, there is little to no research on the narrative devices of these government discourses from literary scholars. This paper addresses how the state’s technocratic visions of Singapore land are reflected in or complicated by local science fiction narratives with ecological themes. Specifically, in this project, I draw on ecocritical approaches to examine the resistance against authoritarianism and the hybrid science fiction-fantasy worldbuilding in Singaporean Neon Yang’s critically acclaimed Tensorate novella series (Tor.com Publishing, 2017-2019). Set on a Southeast-Asian inspired planet, the series follows a civil war between elemental mages who serve the dictator Lady Sanao Hekate and a rebellion of engineers and ordinary people who oppose her rule. By analyzing Yang’s genre-blending experimentation through key motifs such as the state-controlled magical/technological system of slackcraft, the fantastic megafauna of planet Ea, and the manipulation of narrative time throughout the series, I argue that the Tensorate novellas opens space to critically engage with the very definition of technology and science, calling the supposedly rational, apolitical mandate of technocracy into question. In conclusion, this case study shows how Singapore science fiction is a valuable archive for reworking fixed ideas of the future that the government uses to justify its urban redevelopment policies.
Jamie Uy is a MA English Literature student at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research interests include ecocriticism, science fiction, popular culture, screen media, postcolonial theory, and Southeast Asia. She has published in the New Review of Film and Television Studies, Spectator: The USC Journal of Film and Television Criticism, SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English, and Transformative Works and Cultures. Her MA thesis explores technocracy and the environment in Anglophone Singapore science fiction.
“Disperse them now!”: Exploring Crowded Selves, Styles, and National Education in The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
Ow Yeong Wai Kit
Despite the challenges of living in a country founded on the relentless logic of economic pragmatism and neo-liberal capitalism, artists in Singapore have contended with multiple forms of displacement and shifts in public opinion, but have nevertheless found the imaginative space to enrich the nation’s creative and cultural landscape, while helping to push the boundaries of public discourse. In particular, Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015) leverages the creative possibilities of visual representation to problematise and challenge neatly packaged state-sanctioned narratives. This paper argues that the pedagogical implications of the text remain understudied. Liew’s graphic novel serves as a treasure trove of rich and meaningful opportunities for teachers to enrich students’ understanding of National Education in Singapore, because the text ignites illuminating historical possibilities and depicts portrayals of personal subjectivity that elude the circumscribed limits of official standardised metanarratives. By applying Shameen Black’s concept of “crowded selves and crowded styles”, this paper contends that Liew’s illustration and dramatisation of such selves and styles disrupt the conventional logic of the ‘Singapore Story’, even as the text espouses a critically aware authorial voice that is polyvalent, multi-faceted, and self-reflexive. It is not merely the text’s patterns of crowd imagery but also Liew’s stylistic and formal strategies that actualise the work’s potential to prompt deeper considerations and reflections about the complexity of subjectivity, as well as the strengths and hazards of collectives, especially when engaged in contestations for space and power. Despite—or precisely because of—the imaginative means of its critique of dominant state-endorsed ideologies, in addition to its metafictional reimagining of historical and contemporary Singapore contexts, Liew’s graphic novel presents an ideal authentic text that can prompt robust class discussions, supporting more balanced and effective teaching and learning in the Literature-infused National Education classroom.
Ow Yeong Wai Kit is an educator, editor of four anthologies of poetry, and a PhD candidate at the National Institute of Education. He holds a master’s degree in English from University College London. In 2019, he was presented the Outstanding Youth in Education Award by the Ministry of Education.
Amrita Iyer
Amrita Iyer is a third-year PhD candidate at the School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests include science fiction studies and the philosophy of technology in the context of Asian imaginaries. She is currently writing her thesis on the philosophical reconceptualization of the role of technology on social relations, labour practices, and even the ontological status of human beings.