Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History

Alfian Sa’at, Faris Joraimi, Sai Siew Min (editors)

Paperback, 280 pages

9789811420382

Why did independent Singapore celebrate two hundred years of its founding as a British colony in 2019? What does Merdeka mean for Singaporeans? And what are the possibilities of doing decolonial history in Singapore? Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History presents essays by historians, literary scholars and artists which grapple with these questions. The volume also reproduces some of the source material used in the play Merdeka / 獨立 / சுதந்திரம் (Wild Rice, 2019). Taken together, the book shows how the contradictions of independent nationhood haunt Singaporeans' collective and personal stories about Merdeka. It points to the need for a Merdeka history: an open and fearless culture of historical reckoning that not only untangles us from colonial narratives, but proposes emancipatory possibilities.

Contributors: Alfian Sa’at • Neo Hai Bin • Hong Lysa • Huang Jianli • Sai Siew Min • Faris Joraimi • Azhar Ibrahim • Nicholas Lua • Jimmy Ong • Joanne Leow

Contents

1. Introduction

2. 'We refuse to recognise the trauma': A Conversation between Alfian Sa'at and Neo Hai Bin

3. 'Merdeka!': From cacophony to the sound of silence - Hong Lysa

4. Stamford Raffles and the Founding of Singapore: The Politics of Commemoration and Dilemmas of History - Huang Jianli

5. The Bicentennial: Of Precedents, Prequels and the Discipline of History in Singapore - Hong Lysa

6. Why Raffles is Still Standing: Colonialism, Migration and Singapore's Scripting of the Present - Sai Siew Min

7. Finding Merdeka in a World of Statues: Singapore's Colonial Pageant Remade and Unmade - Faris Joraimi

8. Malay Literary Intelligentsia and Colonialism: A Stunted Discourse - Azhar Ibrahim

9. Opening the Bicentennial: Historical Plurality in Sean Cham's Art - Nicholas Lua

10. 'Giving up an attachment to power': An interview with Jimmy Ong

11: 'Theatre doesn't change anything': Merdeka and the Performance of the Singapore Bicentennial - Joanne Leow

12. Merdeka Texts