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Postcards from Singapore : representations and constructions of Singapore/Malaya in British colonial and contemporary Anglo-Saxon travel discourse
Author
Chong, Eileen
Supervisor
Gabrielpillai, Matilda
Abstract
This academic exercise examines the representations and constructions of British Malaya in British colonial travel discourse and post-independence Singapore in contemporary British and North American travel discourse, as well as the construction of British and North American imperial and post-imperial masculine identities as reflected in the travel discourse. My approach is largely influenced by Foucault's theory of discourse (1972 [1969]), which allows me to analyse both literary and non-literary texts as products of an institutionalised power. Travel discourse initially operated within the discursive formation of colonial discourse and, despite the end of Empire, retains much of its original discursive structure. I examine a representative body of travel discourse on Malaya and Singapore comprising six texts from the genres of British colonial fiction and non-fiction, post-independence British and American travelogues and North American travel journalism in order to examine the discursive strategies by which a textual representation of Singapore was constructed in relation to an implied Western centre. I focus on the strategy of surveillance as one of the most powerful discursive tools by which the surveyed comes into representation, examining how the imperial and post-imperial gaze textually maps Singapore in a discourse of ownership and possession. I am also concerned with the formation of a post-imperial masculine identity which situates the contemporary British and North American writer as neo-imperialist by producing Singapore as a "mimic" Bhabha, 1994. 86) of Britain/America. Bhabha reminds us that "the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence" (1994: 86, his emphasis), embodied in the representations of Singapore which continually slip from "mimicry" (a focus on extensive similarity) to "menace" (an assertion of almost total difference). The ambivalence present in this discourse can be read as indications of the writers' possible anxieties surrounding their identities as British and North American imperialists and post-imperialists.
Date Issued
2004
Call Number
PN56.C63 Cho
Date Submitted
2004