Poon, Angelia

This article discusses the ambitious educational reforms of the Singapore government in response to the challenges of globalization vis-à-vis the specific issues arising from the case of teaching Literature in secondary schools. It shows how the Singapore state is invested in a particular view of globalization and argues how recent scholarly moves to recuperate the notion of cosmopolitanism may provide an alternative view. Turning to cosmopolitanism as an intellectual and ethical goal when considering curricular changes to Literature may also help revitalize the subject and garner a more significant role for it in the scripting of Singapore as a nation and global city for the future.

This chapter taps into the deep seam of literary dissent to trace and examines specifically the thematic of failed masculinity in three Singapore novels beginning with what is commonly regarded as the nation's first novel in English, If We Dream Too Long, by Goh Poh Seng. In an interesting continuation in subsequent decades, it is noteworthy that both the novels Abraham's Promise by Philip Jeyaretnam and City of Small Blessings by Simon Tay also center on the idea of failed men. The chapter focuses on Catherine Lim's satirical novel, Miss Seetoh in the World, which presents an interesting inflection of the problematic. In examining these Singapore novels through the optic of masculinity, the chapter draws upon both a tradition of feminist postcolonial scholarship about the gendering of nation and critical developments in gender and sexuality studies which have sought to make masculinity analytically visible as a gender rather than neutral, universal norm around which all else is organized and understood.

Since the nation-state sprang into being in 1965, Singapore literature in English has blossomed energetically, and yet there have been few books focusing on contextualizing and analyzing Singapore literature despite the increasing international attention garnered by Singaporean writers. This volume brings Anglophone Singapore literature to a wider global audience for the first time, embedding it more closely within literary developments worldwide. Drawing upon postcolonial studies, Singapore studies, and critical discussions in transnationalism and globalization, essays unearth and introduce neglected writers, cast new light on established writers, and examine texts in relation to their specific Singaporean local-historical contexts while also engaging with contemporary issues in Singapore society. Singaporean writers are producing work informed by debates and trends in queer studies, feminism, multiculturalism and social justice -- work which urgently calls for scholarly engagement. This groundbreaking collection of essays aims to set new directions for further scholarship in this exciting and various body of writing from a place that, despite being just a small ‘red dot’ on the global map, has much to say to scholars and students worldwide interested in issues of nationalism, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, immigration, urban space, as well as literary form and content. This book brings Singapore literature and literary criticism into greater global legibility and charts pathways for future developments.

In this article, I examine the implications for literature pedagogy based on recent developments in postcolonial theory and globalization studies. I argue for a critical cosmopolitan pedagogy that would nourish the creation of alternative imaginaries and teach young people through literature to be more fully in the world. Two instances of how this might be effected are provided. The first centers on how literary pedagogy in globalized times cannot avoid dealing with texts translated into English from other languages. Using the global, multicultural city of Singapore as a case in point, I show how teaching translated texts can be a strategic way of interrogating the hegemony of the Anglophone segment of the population, and historically, the English-educated class in Singapore, by providing minority perspectives erased by official history. A different past is thus used to question a normalized present. The second instance of a critical cosmopolitan pedagogy is discussed in relation to Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which deals with the pressing global issue of terrorism. It focuses on how the teacher can further help the text in its work to render the reader, rather than the object of narration, strange. Ultimately, a literature pedagogy that takes the question of perspective seriously can help us resist neoliberal capitalism’s emphasis on the management and care of the self in the service of markets in favor of a more politicized global subject fully committed to engaging the world.

This essay focuses on Malay Sketches, a collection of flash fiction written by Alfian Sa'at, the only Malay writer in Singapore who has produced a substantial body of work in English. Alfian represents the specific dynamics of Malay identity and inter-race relations in Singapore, where contemporary pressures of globality complicate the colonial legacies entrenched in everyday cross-cultural interactions. In his writing he attempts to prise a gap in the seal between race, religion and language that the state's multiracial orthodoxy insists on enforcing, and to offer instead other permutations. By choosing deliberately to historicize structures of affect and sentiment, Alfian shows how the Singaporean state's official ideology and wide-ranging policies have played a significant role in constructing Malay subjectivities and informing their sense of being at home in Singapore.