This critical review serves as a significant formal documentation of the postmodern self-reflexive theatre in the postmodern and post-independence Singapore. Through the Human Lefts Series, which I conceptualised and performed between 2005 and 2009, we are able to look at postmodern Singapore theatre beyond issues relating to the loss of cultural and historical past, which might not be significant for those who were born after 1965. The situation is such that, currently, there is no formal documentation of postmodern self-reflexive theatre in the Singapore context, especially theatre pieces responding to postmodern, post-independence Singapore. This critical review aims to detail analysis made from the Human Lefts Series and its significant contribution to the study of self-reflexivity. More relevant issues to the postmodern Singapore include the current political situation, alternative sexualities (homosexuality and transexualism explored in the Human Lefts Series), and the effect of 'cloning' and appropriation being the key cultural dominant of Singapore. By the end 2009, a total of four pieces of works under the Human Lefts umbrella was showcased to the public. Three main outputs will be discussed in this review. The study aims to answer the following research questions: I. What is self-reflexivity in the postmodern, post-independence Singapore context? 2. How has the Human Lefts Series responded to the self-reflexivity defined in this research? 3. How has the concept of self-reflexivity affected the process of creating the Human Lefts Series? 4. What further inferences can be made, in relation to postmodern theories, from the process of creating the Human Lefts Series? This portfolio also highlights the absence of a physical rehearsal process for the Human Lefts Series. With a clear performance structure, a performer can walk into the performance and begin the delivery of the performance immediately. There is also a discussion on the functions of a performer in a postmodern self-reflexive theatre, in relation to Roland Barthes' essay on The Death of the Author. The performer's experience cannot be totally separated from the character in a postmodern self-reflexive performance. The portfolio consists of the main body of text (the review), a set of appendices and the video recording of the three research outputs. It is recommended to watch the video recording (performances) prior to reading this review.

This dissertation explores performances in Singapore as indicators of divergent visions of the nation-state. To understand the ways in which the government and artists contested (or, in some cases, agreed to not contest) the cultural ground requires an examination of performance as a semiotic mode in public life, a genre in art, and an instrument of cultural politics. A study of performance alone cannot sufficiently reveal the subtleties of governmental and artistic agency. The government and artists have mobilized specific figures of speech from a repertoire developed over centuries.These tropes are analysed for their uses, their performative instrumentality, and their discursive power. Tropes and performances coalesce and disseminate prevailing national, regional,and global ideologies. This study examines the power of aesthetic forms, and the aesthetics of power. Competing notions of performance in Singapore led to a cultural crisis in 1993-94. That historical punctum and its ramifications constitutes the primary object of this research, and is presented as a significant indicator of the state of the Singapore state at that time. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

[Truncated abstract] Conventional historical research on the tea trade focussed on the trade between the United Kingdom and China up to 1937. Very little has been done on the tea trade between China and other regions such as colonial Singapore. In addition, the focus on the overseas Chinese community in Singapore has concentrated on two opposite ends of the social ladder the rich traders or merchants who came to dominate the political, economic and social life of the community, and the coolies or those in the working class and how the harsh reality of life in colonial Singapore often quashed any dreams they had of a better life. The key focus of this dissertation is a study of the trading links between a group of Chinese traders in Singapore and commodity producers in China. To date, research into Chinese traders in Singapore has focussed on their trade in products from British Malaya such as rubber and tin. This dissertation aims to steer away from this approach, and study the relationship between Fujian tea production and trade and the Chinese tea traders in Singapore . . . This dissertation, therefore, takes a two-pronged approach. First, it examines the conditions in Fujian tea production and trade since they were the key trading concerns of the Chinese tea traders in Singapore. Secondly, the dissertation examines the political beliefs and sense of patriotism among the Chinese tea traders in Singapore and their response to major events in their lives such as the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the Japanese Occupation of Singapore (1942-1945), the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) and self-government for Singapore from June 1959.

This thesis is a study of the Chinese diaspora in Singapore from 1819 to the 1950s. It begins by situating the diasporic subject in a historical context, highlighting some of the key moments in the diaspora's development, such as the advent of colonialism during the nineteenth century, and the formation of an ethnic enclave in the settlement. The discussion then calls into question the construction of the Chinese subject in colonial discourses, and interrogates the ways in which the diasporic population was constituted within the framework of colonialism. The main purpose has been to examine how the diaspora in Singapore has evolved, and to explore the adequacies, or inadequacies, of existing diasporic theories in the ways they relate to the Chinese experience. This is achieved by recapitulating the theoretical implications of existing diaspora frameworks, and questioning the tensions and limitations generated by such discourses. Simultaneously, this study takes into consideration the construction of a "Chinese identity", and does so by presenting possible ways of conceptualisng what it means to be "Chinese" for subjects of the diaspora. In discussing the extent to which the subject's sense of "self" and belonging has been shaped by its immigrant past, this research draws on and studies the writings, both literary and non-literary, that have emerged from the community. A central concern in all this is the identity and subjectivity of the diasporic subject, and the point here is that not every subject experiences diaspora in the same way, but that these alterities are important in the constitution and formation of a Chinese identity. As I note in the introduction, the issue of what it means to be Chinese, and indeed, the issue of home and belonging, is one that is always contested for people in the diasporic community, and the aim of this thesis has been to continually deconstruct the idea of a "single" Chinese diaspora, and to expose it as a heterogeneous, fragmented, and internally differentiated construction.

By 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore.

By 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore.

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published_or_final_version / History / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Colonial intellectual is a good point of entry for making sense of anti-colonial movement because in many cases they constituted the pioneer of the movement. Moreover, in some cases, they became the founding father of new nations. However, such an important social category received inadequate attentions. / The main concern of this research is: how to make sense of the fact that in some colonies, anti-colonial movement were stronger while in others, the subjects were silent. The present writer would use colonial intellectuals from three areas (Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) as cases to illustrate the development of anti-colonial movements in above three areas in late nineteenth Century and Early Twenty Century. / Using the theory of institutionalization as theoretical framework, the present writer argued that the level of institutionalized of the society is the prime mover of the event. To view colonial society as a social group, it is argued that only in those societies reaching a high level of institutionalization, then members of the society would develop a kind of locally oriented vision of the society. That kind of vision is the necessary condition of anti-colonial movement. In the following thesis, the present writer would discuss in what way colonial governance, migration, and the conditions of pre-colonial society shaped the level of institutionalization of the discussed cases. / 劉紹麟. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-10, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Liu Shaolin.