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)

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This study represents the scandal of current colonial racist ideologizing by focusing on the American Orientalizing project in Singapore. It argues that, in the era of global capitalism and post-colonial theory, the new colonialist epistemologies rely on collaborations between the ruling classes of the 'third world' and 'first world' as well as a rhetoric of 'native' nationalism to contain threatening non-Western economic success and to create 'third world' populations and governments that will not resist the continuation of the Western/American colonizing project. Using a Marxist-Lacanian psychoanalytical theory of hegemony, of a "libidinal politics" which focuses on the role of desire in national culture, this thesis shows that the Singapore government has used American Orientalist ideology to effect disempowering cultural changes in the people. Examining political and literary texts, I argue that the Singapore government quotes American notions of 'Oriental' difference to keep "dangerous Western (liberal) influences" from 'ethnically contaminating' the nation, and that it has hegemonized an 'Asian'/'Confucianist' nationalism by hystericizing and repressing the people's desire, leading Singaporeans to disavow their location in a post-modern world. The Orientalizing of Singapore, where Chinese identity has been produced as a masquerade of Western culture, has also generated a crisis in male identity, involving an inward-looking escapist cultural narcissism that blocks a positive response to historical realities. Paradoxically, the claim to a non-Western modernity has also been used to suppress ethnic difference by producing ethnicity as 'fetish.' The East/West discourse that emerged from the caning of an American teenager, Michael Fay, in Singapore is used to reveal the entrapment of Singapore's 'Oriental' national identity in American colonial desire, and to argue that the perceived East Asian 'cultural confidence' often spoken about today overlooks the fact that such cultural certitude accrues from the East entering into the West's fantasy scenarios and staging itself as the other's object of desire. This thesis suggests that current 'post-colonial' claims to "ethnic, non-Western" modernisms be viewed with some skepticism as possibly involving the ventriloquistic 'passing' of Western colonial ideology as the voice of the 'racial other.'

It is commonly assumed that the development of tourist attractions, the formulation of tourism policies and the marketing of destination areas are dictated by the needs and interests of foreign visitors. What is ignored is the role that local factors and agencies bring to bear upon the process. This thesis is devoted to exploring the ways that local and non-local factors are responsible for shaping the form and function of tourism development. Drawing upon the case of Singapore, the thesis examines the country's heritage tourism phenomena as the outcome of 'local' and 'global' forces. This argument is elaborated along four lines of enquiry. They include a study of government policies on tourism, a look at entrepreneurs involved in heritage projects, an exploration of marketing and promotional strategies, and the examination of a particular urban landscape the Little India Historic District. To conceptualize the global-local nexus, the thesis adopts two bodies of theory. They are the 'locality concept' advanced by industrial geographers in the 1980s and writings on 'globalism-localism' by cultural/economic geographers in the 1990s. Both theoretical discussions reinforce the argument that place uniqueness is not necessarily sacrificed as a result of globalization. They also provide a way of viewing tourism geographies as the product of global and local forces.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

This study represents the scandal of current colonial racist ideologizing by focusing on the American Orientalizing project in Singapore. It argues that, in the era of global capitalism and post-colonial theory, the new colonialist epistemologies rely on collaborations between the ruling classes of the 'third world' and 'first world' as well as a rhetoric of 'native' nationalism to contain threatening non-Western economic success and to create 'third world' populations and governments that will not resist the continuation of the Western/American colonizing project. Using a Marxist-Lacanian psychoanalytical theory of hegemony, of a "libidinal politics" which focuses on the role of desire in national culture, this thesis shows that the Singapore government has used American Orientalist ideology to effect disempowering cultural changes in the people. Examining political and literary texts, I argue that the Singapore government quotes American notions of 'Oriental' difference to keep "dangerous Western (liberal) influences" from 'ethnically contaminating' the nation, and that it has hegemonized an 'Asian'/'Confucianist' nationalism by hystericizing and repressing the people's desire, leading Singaporeans to disavow their location in a post-modern world. The Orientalizing of Singapore, where Chinese identity has been produced as a masquerade of Western culture, has also generated a crisis in male identity, involving an inward-looking escapist cultural narcissism that blocks a positive response to historical realities. Paradoxically, the claim to a non-Western modernity has also been used to suppress ethnic difference by producing ethnicity as 'fetish.' The East/West discourse that emerged from the caning of an American teenager, Michael Fay, in Singapore is used to reveal the entrapment of Singapore's 'Oriental' national identity in American colonial desire, and to argue that the perceived East Asian 'cultural confidence' often spoken about today overlooks the fact that such cultural certitude accrues from the East entering into the West's fantasy scenarios and staging itself as the other's object of desire. This thesis suggests that current 'post-colonial' claims to "ethnic, non-Western" modernisms be viewed with some skepticism as possibly involving the ventriloquistic 'passing' of Western colonial ideology as the voice of the 'racial other.' / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Calgary (Canada), 1988. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

Proefschrift : Sociale Wetenschappen : Nijmegen, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.