KJ
Dedicated to Khairulanwar Zaini
The Fajar Generation has spoken, so has one intrepid historian. There is a growing realization that simply regurgitating our dominant history is inadequate, if not misleading. The dominant history dominated everything but ‘the truth’. Amidst our excitement over these emerging alternative histories, we might remember that History is one possibility, out of many, to recall one’s past and arrive at ‘truth’.
I am reminded of this story about a baby girl whom a pair of missionaries adopted. She was to grow up to preach the Word of God. Unfortunately, she grew up to love words more than God. And when she was old enough to fall in love, her lover was neither man nor God, but another girl. Faced with such irreconcilable choices, she ran away from home, from God, so that she could continue to love her words and her girl. Time passed, and her girl became history. Later on, she became a novelist, and her girl became a story in her book. Herstory.
She was often asked, “Autobiography?”
Like the Fajar Generation, like The Singapore Story?
“No,” she would reply. “There’s no autobiography, there are only art and lies.”
***
History. You are burrowed in the archives, poring through paragraphs of Time and Long Ago. You assess them to the best of your ability, and you transcribe them as accurately as you can. Then, you write a monograph about Time and Long Ago.
Those archived paragraphs, uttered by strangers you had never met, transcribed by you whose reliability you suspect, get published by people whose main reasons are faith in you (PhD) and making a name for themselves. Padded by ‘research’, couched in ‘academic’ language and bloated with citations (Harvard Style, 1965), your monograph about Time and Long Ago acquires a patina of Authority and gets transmitted to the outside world as History (Prestigious University Press).
A caricature of the discipline of History perhaps, but is History not a caricature of our memories?
History? Truth? Yes, to the extent that it is a history of the passing of eyes and hands, subjectivity and chance. To the extent that it is a first word and not a final sentence, that it is both a story and a question, so that the question of history – whose history, and whose story – is never sentenced, never silenced.
Facts alone do not make History, because facts do not speak for themselves. You do. So you historicize facts.
But historicization has a problem – the problem of Time.
Time has a problem too. The problem of you and I.
What am I? Atoms. What are atoms? Empty space and points of light. What is the speed of light? 300,000 kilometres per second. What is a second? That depends where in the universe you set your watch.
– Jeanette Winterson, Weight
It appears unavoidable that physical reality must be described in terms of continuous functions in space. The material point can hardly be conceived anymore.
- Albert Einstein
But for a generation weaned on foundational fixities, authority, and ir-rationalist science, the free-fall from the disappearance of foundations can be an unsettling endeavour; more fallen than freed.
***
If my life story is spiraled and myriad, at once true and false, rational and radical, and non-linear without any neat beginning, middle and end, how can a singular, linear, and ‘objective history’ of my life proclaim to be true? Wouldn’t it read more like an arrogant and un-reason-able lie?
History, a European subject, an imperial discipline, a masculine discourse. It subjects and it disciplines. India once belonged to the British Empire. Time passed, inevitably, and India’s history came to be written by the English. And the Indian people became the disciplined subjects of History. This discipline was wrong, not because it was not based on ‘facts’. It was factual, but false. And incomplete. And violent. History was, and still is, an enterprise narrated by Empire, for Empire.
The Indian Subaltern historians later intervened. But they had to abandon their project of historicizing India. An impossibility. Because India’s Time was not the linear Time of Europe, of History and its Euro-centric methods. India’s Time was multiple. Cyclical. Filled with myths, gods, and reincarnations no less true and real. India was another world altogether.
They realized that they had to abandon History and let loose stories. Fragments of stories, and fragments of fragments that would reveal – not truth – but the violence of truth. The pretence to truth. ‘Truth’ that enabled the subjection of peoples and the abstraction of lives.
Perhaps, as suggested by the Indian thinker Ashis Nandy, we need more than alternative histories. We need alternatives to History. Myths, rumours and folklore, the ‘forgotten doubles of History’ that constitute humankind’s multiple realities. How does one excavate the past when that past is shaped by the present?
Odd that we poke fun at myths when ‘objective truth’ is no less mythical.
***
We know the Great Singapore Story. You can tell The Story purely from faceless facts – this date this place these lives these triumphs. You’d probably score an A for factual recount, if not for superb recall. One Man’s Word disguised as National Education, Social Studies and History, disguised as neutral education, disguised as your own life story.
Ace this exam that tests your ability to retell the Great Singapore Story (Approved Syllabus). Toe the lines and say the right things learnt in school and cautioned by society (Approved Politics). Enjoy the fruits of thy Singapore Story.
Whose story? Which story? Whose Singapore?
The Singapore of Lee Kuan Yew’s Little Red Book of Third World to First, or the Singapore of J. B. Jeyaretnam’s assassination by the Hatchet Man? The aspirations and later exasperations of S. Rajaratnam, or the enduring indictments of Francis Seow, inexorably tarred into exile? The archived speech of yet another Golden Age by Lee Hsien Loong told to obedient laughter, or that forgotten letter of Chia Thye Poh written in solitude on his island of imported sand and artificial lagoon and recounted to the ribald laughter of indifferent youths?
A recall of just a few suppressed (his)tories, all yearning for and uncovering their layers of Singapore.
History? Yes, and Victory. Stories of victors and their power.
History? Yes, and Hubris. Stories of tyrants and their triumph.
Facts? Yes, and Forgetting.
And blindness, amnesia, betrayal, seduction, manipulation, absence, abstraction, intoxication. The myriad disgrace of History. The Singapore Story is hardly a history of Singapore, much less the history of Singapore that we have read about. It is a fantasy that we’re living in.
And for the Fajar Generation, even as its claims to truth and History are contested – and must be contested – their Singapore Story has been one of inarticulable pain and immeasurable loss.
***
The Fajar Generation has spoken. The exiled, the invisible, the silenced. In a sense, we are the Fajar Generation – it generated us. And we have yet to speak.
Do we need History to do so?
History?
Our lives spiraled like a dream becomes plotted on a graph?
History.
Unravel it: His story.
Why is the story always His. Male. Other? Where is Mine?
Unravel History.
See the myriad stories?
Whose?
Anyone who tells a story.
Are stories true?
Yes of course and not at all.
Our lives are spiraled like a dream.
And we go on telling, stories of chance and life, of you and I, but only if we would tell it.
Revive the ideals of Fajar, let there not be another forty years of silence. Tell our stories. Make our histories.
Tell me a story, Pew.
What kind of story, child?
A story with a happy ending.
There’s no such thing in the world.
As a happy ending?
As an ending.
– Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
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We simply have to Wait for the inevitable to happen For us.
Keep ourselves healthy.
Outlive.
“History is one possibility, out of many, to recall one’s past and arrive at ‘truth’.”
I’m not sure what your definition of History is, but this sentence suggests a postmodernist position, espousing truth relativism.
This is also a misrepresentation of history – that is to say that History is not a recalling of the past, nor is it a reconstruction of the past as you suggest. History, as Arthur Marwick clarifies, is producing knowledge about the past.
The second and third segments of your essay reek of Foucault and postmodernist relativism, espousing a Marxist critique of bourgeois society and its institutions. The following paragraph is a dead giveaway.
“History, a European subject, an imperial discipline, a masculine discourse. It subjects and it disciplines. India once belonged to the British Empire. Time passed, inevitably, and India’s history came to be written by the English. And the Indian people became the disciplined subjects of History. This discipline was wrong, not because it was not based on ‘facts’. It was factual, but false. And incomplete. And violent. History was, and still is, an enterprise narrated by Empire, for Empire.”
It seems that your definition of history is limited to political history – history of great men and events, written as teleological narratives. What about other historical approaches – social history, women’s history, cultural history, etc? Why can’t History be a vehicle for emancipation as much as it has been used as a tool for oppression?
Your argument seems rooted in postmodernism, which would contend that all production of texts and knowledge (in which History is included) is intrinsically tainted by bourgeois ideology, and therefore inevitably perpetuate the bourgeois power.
“Perhaps, as suggested by the Indian thinker Ashis Nandy, we need more than alternative histories. We need alternatives to History. Myths, rumours and folklore, the ‘forgotten doubles of History’ that constitute humankind’s multiple realities.”
Here it seems that you are rolling out your postmodernist attack on History. Postmodernist theory regards that there is no objective truth, and all meaning dissolves into relativity. As such History can hold no exclusive claim to truth, and is indistinguishable from fiction or literature (hence your suggestion of the use of myths, folklore etc). All texts are equally valid (or invalid). From here, you set the stage for the writing of contrarian History (or fictions as you might argue).
But herein lays the problem – what makes the alternative anymore valid than the History they seek to displace? What privileges one over the other?
I could generate a relevant and revealing parody of your paragraph here – ‘Perhaps we need more than alternative evidence-based medicine. We need alternatives to evidence-based medicine. Homeopathy, faith healing, quackery, the myriad of healthcare options that provide comfort and relief to humankind’s multiple ailments and sufferings.’
I hope you can see from this the problems in your argument. It is a nod to the propagation of what Harry Frankfurt describes as “bullshit” in his famous essay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit) – where the truth value of the information is irrelevant, and all that matters is what the ‘bullshit’ means and does to its propagators and recipients.
While your aim is to encourage the emergence of alternative histories – something I believe everyone can agree is vital and must be expedited – I disagree with your approach, which is to attempt to pull the epistemological rug from beneath a misunderstood notion of History.
There is no need to do so. History is not absolute. It is contingent and subject to revision. As Pieter Geyl described, History is an argument without end.
Besides, the thrust of your criticisms are not merely directed at history. They also intrinsically attack all ways of knowing, including enlightenment rationality, science, etc. Scientific knowledge and scientific method are not spared from postmodern critique, since it argues all meaning is constructed in language, and nothing exists outside of it.
I hope more Singaporeans would want to write books including biography and history as well. Maybe they can self publish as an e-book. Knowledge should be passed down.
This great article clearly shows the weakness of Singaporeans despite the fact they like to imagine they are strong, stronger than Malaysians, stronger than every other South East Asian, stronger than many Asians, stronger than many people around the world. The truth is they are weak and due to their weakness they are in an awefully silly and compromised position being helpless lacking almost all freedom to be who they can be.
When i travel the world, i hear people tell me their stories. Most of the times, its different from what the media says though consistent with some literature. When i meet a burmese, they can tell me their stories which i never get to hear from their junta or the news. When i meet an afghan who has gone through the soviet era, taliban era and now the occupation-karzai era, they tell me stories that again i dont hear from media and are totally different from the stories told by soviets/taliban/US/karzai…. when i meet africans who have gone through the worst human catastrophies such as in rawanda, they too tell stories that are totally different from what the media says or what their governments told/telling.
now this is not some isolated minority in each instance who tell their stories. in fact, its almost everyone.
however when you meet a singaporean almost two third of the time, you hear exactly what has been written and told to them by the State. when you question the reliability of those stories, they refuse to even imagine the stories that they know are untrue. they prefer to see the picture that has been painted for them and are totally scared to see the realities. they will mock, scorn, derile whoever questions their painted picture. to them its almost like an alter. its sacriligeous to them to even suggest that their picture has been painted.
in this painted picture, the imperfections and blunders of the State are totally omitted. the harshness, wickedness and abuses of the State are totally omitted. the darkness and risks are totally omitted. what then is within the picture is an illusinoary paradise on earth, perfect than what any other man can create. we are number 1 is the natural conclusion Singaporeans draw from the picture.
with this picture deeply inscribed in the minds and hearts of two third of Singaporeans, it is then no surprise that two thirds of Singaporeans have kept an autocratic regime in power for 50 years. many today are harbouring the belief that change is around the corner from the fact that sentiments and opinons are more unappreciative of the State. however those who believe in this are naive as the strong sentiments for change only lies within one third of the population. two third of the population still want PAP for anther 50 years.
why? the picture painted for them still remains deeply entrenched in their minds and hearts as their altar. one has to demolish that false idol that they worship. that false picture that they seek comfort in. that picture need to be shattered. internet is not the sufficient medium to do so. yes many singaporeans use internet but they dont read anything that will shatter their picture. they are also more fearful to come to sites like TR and TOC than visiting porn sites. they have been told politics is dangerous and should not be discussed. such play rules are also deeply entrenched in them.
the failure of the alternative parties, think tanks, arts groups etc etc in reaching out to the two thirds of the population is still being denied by them. at this state, the only way change will come is when the painted picture falls apart by the course of time.
Hi Spiegel,
Thanks for your considered response, I do appreciate it. My main contention is History is only one of many ways of recalling, or as you offered: ‘producing knowledge about’, the past/present. I’m not an exponent of ‘truth relativity’, nor as enthusiastic about postmodernism as you made me out to be, though they have about themselves tools that are useful – tools that ‘enabled’ cultural history, women’s history to make advances within disciplinary History :) I believe that truth claims can be, and should be, established.
If we do differ, it seems to reside in ‘what constitutes as truth’ – hence more ontological than epistemological; we certainly don’t differ on the point that ‘there is no truth at all’ (this in itself a grand claim paradoxical to postmodernism). My use of Indian examples might reveal the postcolonial predilections. Hence implicitly, I would argue that postmodernism as well as postmodern critiques of Euro/scientific rationalism are ultimately intra-paradigmatic debates – a eurocentrism that postcolonialism resists.
I privilege stories in their various forms (myths, folklore, fiction, poetry, even ‘religion’) not just because I believe they have legitimate claims to emotional and historical truth. They expose the limits of History as confession and record. Gyanendra Pandey has elaborated on the difficulty of writing the ‘historical moment of violence’: where pain, trauma, memory, and loss becomes ineffable, if not unhistoricizable, and hence impedes ‘the production of knowledge about the past’. But yet they find expression and translation – outside of History.
It would be foolhardy to ‘displace’ (the discipline of) History. But I wanted to address what I think is a prevalent notion: that ‘what is not History, is unhistorical’. Or, to reverse it: ‘that which is historical, must be placed within History’. It is a position I think disabling.
Thus, I wanted to emplace History within broader categories of knowledge, and sources of knowledge, that can broaden one’s understanding of history, of humanity, and more importantly, to reclaim agency for the subject to ‘make history’ – whatever the claims that are being made in the name of History.
Spiegel
i think what KJ essentially is saying is the need for truths to tell the story more than just facts. there is nothing wrong in that
@KJ,
Thanks for your response, although I’m still not sure I agree with you…
“I privilege stories in their various forms (myths, folklore, fiction, poetry, even ‘religion’) not just because I believe they have legitimate claims to emotional and historical truth.”
I think this is a false distinction. History would in fact incorporate these sources to draw out the witting and unwitting testimonies that reside within them. As cultural products of the era under historical investigation, these have claims to ‘truth’ as much as any other primary source.
Historians who write about the Roman empire must inevitably study the legends – the likes of Horatii, Romulus and Remus and what else have you – that survive. Cultural, even (New) military, historians would never pass up the use of poetry to illicit insight into the frontline soldier’s psyche in the First World War for instance. Students of 19th century France will not miss on Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, while those who study the Napoleonic Wars would turn to Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace to pad their understanding and knowledge of the period they study.
All these ‘alternative documentations of the past’ are not invalid. But they are not in themselves alternatives to history. They are alternatives to history written as narrative.
“Gyanendra Pandey has elaborated on the difficulty of writing the ‘historical moment of violence’: where pain, trauma, memory, and loss becomes ineffable, if not unhistoricizable, and hence impedes ‘the production of knowledge about the past’.”
Difficult but not impossible. Historians often make use of cultural cues and devices to convey historical understanding. Some of those more comfortable with their literary craft even delve into semi-fictional representations of historical eras.
“Thus, I wanted to emplace History within broader categories of knowledge, and sources of knowledge, that can broaden one’s understanding of history, of humanity, and more importantly, to reclaim agency for the subject to ‘make history’ – whatever the claims that are being made in the name of History. ”
Then surely the comparison is with the humanities and social sciences – literature, geography, anthropology, sociology, etc., as opposed to specific literary forms like mythology, poetry etc.
Good History will borrow analyses and tools from these disciplines to advance historical understanding, and even use them in the writing presentation of History – the development and evolution of the Annales school represented this movement, in reaction to the dominance of traditional political, narrative type history.
@singapore divided
actually, if you read his piece closely, that’s not what he is saying.
Hi Spiegel,
very quickly for now, and chewing on what you’ve said: I believe History needs to be re-imagined rather than incorporating the Other to improve on the Self. The fundamental difference is one between decolonizing History (by ‘provincializing Europe’ following the Historian Dipesh Chakrabarty), and strengthening History as sovereign entity – but whose sovereignty belongs to Europe.
It’s interesting you mentioned those soc.sci/humanities disciplines (but not Literature, it being a more ‘universal’ ‘art’): their inherent and originary Eurocentrism have been most felt within Anthropology and Geography (and very increasingly now, History), along with the acknowledgement that the disciplines need reimagination and decolonization.
I’ve some doubts about ‘waiting for (a better/the perfect) History’ to be written, be it for the service of History, or emancipation, of both (if one doesn’t take them to be mutually-exclusive) . The Fajar Generation and hegemonic Singapore Story point to how it’s not so much the veracity/truth of History as it is power (institutional/material), or the obstinacy/limits of disciplinary methodology that disable the very (human) agency required to ‘write/do/make History’ and emancipation.
If there’s an opportunity, would love to discuss this more in-depth.
Cheers : )
Hi Singapore divided, thanks for your comments : )
Ver ygenerally I’m saying we should tell and listen to stories that reside without History, and that they contain ‘truths’ that one may not, will not, have not yet think of as ‘History’ (but not the postmodern excesses of ‘truth relativity’ – broadening of truth criteria/definitions perhaps; multiple truths).
hey this KJ is not Kenneth Jeyaratnam right?
11) fae on January 11th, 2010 5.11 pm
Nope. Conversely, MJ does not stand for Michael Jackson only.
@KJ
Some more thoughts here…
“The fundamental difference is one between decolonizing History (by ‘provincializing Europe’ following the Historian Dipesh Chakrabarty), and strengthening History as sovereign entity – but whose sovereignty belongs to Europe.”
Sure History can be reasonably argued to be intrinsically “Western/European” discipline. Its practitioners’ perception of reality dictates their conception of historical time, leads to a favouring of the metanarrative (or even triumphalist teleology), results in disproportionate interest in political and economic history over alternative fields of interest, and as a result arbitrarily privileges written and archival documentation as a premium source of historical testimony over other primary sources.
I suppose, at the risk of blatant Northern Hemisphere bias and cultural supremacism, I would also say that certain societies will have no use for History, just as they have no use for modern technology or complex political and legal institutions. Their belief systems eschew linear conceptions of time, which is a fundamental prerequisite for History. For despite the saying, historians will tell you that history never ever repeats itself.
Nonetheless, I still regard this perception of a Euro-centric History as a misguided attack on the fundamentals of the discipline, when the problem is really in the practitioners and their practice – the way they formulate their historical problems and questions influencing the answers they seek and the histories they write. Chakrabarty appears to be talking more specifically about the history of decolonisation and extrapolating about the entire discipline, but I’m not sure how valid this is.
Fundamentally, History is no different from Science in that they are pursuits of a posteriori knowledge, although of course there are distinct differences, especially in that History emphasises contingency while Science seeks predictive power. Both lay claim to the discovery of truth, but at the same time are tainted by the flaws and biases of their practitioners.
Perhaps their methods in themselves do inform and skew their output, but I think the problem of Euro-centrism is less a systemic failing of the epistemology than the transfer of practitioner’s bias and prejudices into the work.
On the other hand, literature – especially the likes of myths and folklore – produce and reproduce a priori knowledge; something that should not sit well with people with an interest in seeking an understanding of the past.
If History intrinsically (that is to say by virtue of its epistemological basis) doesn’t do justice to a certain culture, then perhaps the problem is less of cultural imperialism than an incompatibility of belief systems.
“The Fajar Generation and hegemonic Singapore Story point to how it’s not so much the veracity/truth of History as it is power (institutional/material), or the obstinacy/limits of disciplinary methodology that disable the very (human) agency required to ‘write/do/make History’ and emancipation.”
Seems very Foucault. Lol.
I’m not sure what you mean by the professional methods of the historical discipline disabling the ability for people to do history. History without method is nothing; it loses its epistemological basis, and ceases to be a way of producing knowledge.
Perhaps you might want to clarify what you mean here?
That about 2/3rd of Singaporeans have their “brains-White-Washed AND Side-Blinded by just one man”? Isn’t he “brilliant” or the typical Singaporean of 2/3rd majority are just FEARFULLY enough to have become brainless enough too under the aura of THAT man’s idea of “POLITICAL Change-IS-BAD FOR YOU”? Like a Frightened Child brought to believe that this world isn’t ALWAYS in a A STATE OF FLUX and dynamic?
Except of course only THAT one guy IS? What a CONUNDRUM INDEED by him? How fearful of dynamism Singaporeans are generally to the extent that they will even accept THAT guy’s about them as “No More hard driving and hard striving” compare to PRCs? WHAT A PITIFUL state of mind you’ve become by The giving up of your mind to the Threats, Coercions and Discrimination as well as Demeaning rhetoric of but only one man! It is thus no wonder at all how insignificant you;ve become in comparison to THAT guy! SHAME ON you for being like a cat afraid of the mouse! KNOW THAT a bully IS ALWAYS a cowardI
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Wow this information is great! Thanks this has helped me alot! Im sure your post’s are one of the best out there! always
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