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Accepted Paper:
"I’d Rather Burn My Boat!" Nostalgia after the Eviction, or What Happened to the Pain?
Ivan Kwek
(National University of Singapore)
How did it feel to be evicted? This paper, based on fieldwork on the cultural production of a couple of memory-making projects on the displaced inhabitants of Singapore's Southern Islands goes beyond the outpouring of nostalgia to listen closely to the suppressed affects.
Paper long abstract:
How did it feel to be evicted? And then to see the island that was once your home turned into a rubbish dump, an oil refinery, or a firing range for the military air force? Such were the experiences of entire communities, a generation ago, who once lived on about a dozen little islands off the southern coast of Singapore. While many of the islanders struggled to adjust to a life away from the sea, and in the urban centres, their struggles and voices were barely audible. Overshadowing them are narratives of “sacrifices” for the national good and how modernization is “inevitable”. These, in turn, manages the affect by offering hope for a better future and justification for the eviction.
But what happens when a younger generation of Singaporeans, many of whom divorced from the embodied experience of eviction, revisit this history? This paper is a work in progress based on fieldwork on the cultural production of a couple of memory-making projects. Going beyond the outpouring of nostalgia in the process and listening carefully to the suppressed affects. The domination of these works as an aspect of governance and control.