So my ten year old son
likes to begin a story out of nowhere.
He used to start his compositions
with "one day".
And until I told him,
"You know,
you need to be more creative.
Everything you write
begins with 'one day'.
You need to be more creative".
So now he starts with a dialogue.
He tells me, "I don't know how a story
should begin,
I can only write what happens".
So, reading his compositions
I know he has a bright future
writing reports
but that is another story.
But my son taught me
a useful lesson though:
How should stories begin?
Whose stories are we telling?
Who are we in the story?
Where are we telling the story from?
Wait, the arrow right or left?
[Gestures]
Oh, shit!
[Laughter]
I only know how to tell stories, yeah.
Oh, okay.
So let's consider this photograph:
One day, it was raining,
a woman sheltered
an old lady with a hijab
and someone photographed
her thoughtful gesture.
The end.
Just the way my son would write his compo.
But this picture went viral,
and the story that anchors it
tells us a lot about what multiracialism
means in Singapore.
The emphasis on the Malay hijab girl
being oh so kind
to cover the head of a random
Chinese old lady
with her tudung.
Except, the old lady was her grandmother.
Except, they didn't have an umbrella.
Except, she was the child
of a Chinese man
who married a Muslim woman
and became Muslim.
Except, why is this even a story?
[Laughter]
Sakinah would later write on her blog
that she felt like an animal on exhibit
both exposed and violated
because, as she quotes,
"People feel they have the right
to decide whether or not
she is my grandmother,
or some random Chinese lady
just based on their
yet-to-mature world view".
End quote.
Sakinah's personal story
drops the mic on racial harmony,
or any attempts to racialise harmony,
or any attempts to harmonise racism.
Like Sakinah, I, too, am an outlier,
a trans-identified, queer, Malay Muslim
with a phD.
As an outlier, depending on which
axis of privilege we intersect,
be it class, race, religion,
gender or sexuality,
the stories we tell often goes
two ways:
reshape the mainstream,
or be forgotten altogether.
What kinds of stories get remembered
in Singapore?
Okay, this way it works.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So growing up in Singapore,
the only true Singapore stories
that I used to believe in
were by Russell Lee.
[Laughter]
Okay.
So my first lesson in multiracialism
was in understanding that
there was a Chinese hell
that was different
from a Malay hell.
[Laughter]
Okay.
That Chinese see Chinese ghosts
and Malays see Malay ghosts.
[Laughter]
And Indians, you know,
they see everything.
[Laughter]
So, it got me thinking:
"Are ghosts in Singapore
so adept at racial profiling?
What is going on here?"
So obviously for this course today,
I mean not course, um,
for this talk today
I'm going to talk about Singapore stories.
Thank you Russell Lee for that cover page.
Okay, so in 2009, I was spurred
to examine the history
and representation of the Pontianak
in Singapore for my Masters thesis.
Because of the mass anxiety
that was surrounding
something called "Nenek Keropok",
an old Malay lady who goes
door to door
specifically targeting Malay houses
begging people to buy her keropok
which is some kind of fish snack.
Okay.
So if you should refuse,
and never refuse an entrepreneurial
spirit okay?
She would unleash the Pontianak
into your house.
So in 2009,
mind you, I was writing my thesis
on the Pontianak,
so this should be a good opportunity
for me right?
I made my house,
that was,
that I was co-habitating
with my then girlfriend,
as un-Malay as possible
cause I didn't want any keropok
to come in.
So this was not difficult
given that there was no
bismillah or Arabic scripture
on my front door
and I also had a painting
of two naked women
staring at each other's naked bodies
with the caption:
"chaos in the cosmos"
so I thought that was enough
as a protection.
So I was so confident that
the Nenek Keropok would skip
my un-Malay house
until one day,
I was home alone writing my thesis
and someone knocked on the door
and said "keropok,
...keropok"
So my first instinct was
to move far away
from the door as possible.
And the second, the inevitable question:
"How she know I Malay sia?"
[Laughter]
So my reaction was best explained
by Michael Bell,
that "our sense of rightful possession
of place depends in part
upon our sense of the ghost
that possess it,
and the connections of different people
to these ghosts.
Ghosts make claims about
the territories of social life.
Ghosts are political.
Thus, the possession
of a place by a ghost
is not an immaterial phenomenon".
So this is why I took the Ponianak
very seriously,
because it represents something
that makes people feel haunted
by a presence in contemporary Singapore.
So my belief is this:
the Pontianak is political.
So I spent,
um, and this picture over here
the Pontianak Awareness Programme,
that was found, I think,
in Singapore General -
no, Changi Hosp -
no, Changi Hospital.
Yup.
The old Changi Hospital.
So I spent a year between 2008
and 2009 listening to
Malay people calling into the local radio
segment called "Misteri Jam Dua Belas"
otherwise known as "Midnight Mystery".
It's still going on,
so you can tune into [pause]
89.7, I think, to listen to that radio talk show
but you got to understand Malay.
So I also went on ghost hunts,
spoke to Malays who claimed that they
could see ghosts
or have experience being haunted
or possessed.
I analysed over 60 narratives.
I found that Pontianak hauntings
revealed every day social tensions
of living in a multiracial,
and highly competitive society.
They mirror our every day realities
and ironies of social policies.
What does it mean for the Pontianak
to be alive in Singapore?
So according to the narratives
I gathered, the Pontianak
roams around the corridors,
carparks, void decks,
and staircases of public housing flats.
The standardised nature of public housing
makes it pertinent for her to make
her mark on places.
The very notion of citing:
"I saw a Pontianak there",
differentiates that space from others.
The Pontianak is also selective
of the houses she chooses to haunt.
She possesses the stock of knowledge
to enter houses Malays owned
and to avoid those that are not.
She's aware of racial quotas
with regards to re-sale flats
previously demarcated as Malay enclaves.
The ghost of a Malay flat
is passed onto the next Malay owner,
while the Pontianak already existing
in flats of Chinese or Indian occupants
lay dormant,
symbolising the lingering
residue of previous Malay occupants
and an anticipative desire for potential ones
to make her presence known.
I was told a few times that
"Hantu melayu tak kacau orang Cina"
"Malay ghosts do not disturb Chinese people"
and vice-versa.
Whatever the Chinese are afraid of
it does not affect the Malays.
Thank god, right?
Since there are 75% of you.
[Laughter]
Lai Ah Eng, in studying meanings
of multi-ethnicity in the public housing
of Singapore,
demonstrates this effect
by highlighting how the highly standardised
design of public housing
provokes residents to
personalise their homes.
So given this persuasive circumstances
of multi-ethnic living in Singapore,
most residents would find it necessary
to establish territories of self
through identity markers.
So due to this intrusiveness
of state policies,
private spaces becomes the most
controllable part of residents'
living environment.
So for the Malays who are at the
margins of Singapore's foray
into this brave new world,
the Pontianak sightings represent
forms of strategic control
over their environment.
As well as I would argue,
the creative strategy to
reframe the limitations of the environment.
So another example that I found
in my studies is that
not all kampongs are nostalgised equally.
We often hear the state leaders say:
"Bring back the kampong spirit",
you know, you see that in
Joseph Schooling right
everybody rallies to basically
throne a champion
but what does this nostalgia
for the kampong mean?
And most importantly,
whose kampong are we referring to?
So, the Pontianak is the embodiment
of the rurality.
It is an expressive energy of the
Malay kampong collective
and whose continued presence in urban Singapore
highlights the existence of a memory of place.
So this durability is a concern to the state
for whom the supposed existence
of a tightly-knit minority Malay community
often bears negative connotations
and consequences.
In 1979, Abdullah Tarmugi
issued a statement that the Malays
brought with them most of their
neighbourly attitudes from the kampong
when moving to the HDB flats.
Almost 30 years later, in June 2005,
the Straits Times ran the headline:
"Kampong Spirit Alive in Estates"
to highlight the findings of the
HDB Sample Household Survey 2005.
The findings showed that Singapore Chinese
were the least neighbourly
and had the weakest sense of belonging
and community involvement
than other ethnic groups such as
Malays and Indians.
In a survey conducted in the previous year
by The Straits Times,
Malays were also found to be
the most neighbourly
compared to other ethnic groups.
However, in July 2005,
Minister Mentor, the late Lee Kuan Yew,
professed how racial integration in neighbourhoods
has not been completely successful
because the rate of intermingling
and acceptance is faster
among certain groups than in others.
He singled out the Malay community
as an example of such a failure.
And he says, I quote,
"They've centered around the mosque
more than other social centres we got.
Not quite what we've hoped for."
You see, I leave in Selegie and right
above where I live is the RC,
Resident Community area,
and every Thursday they invite people
to come and gather and just have
a ball of time,
and I wonder, you know,
do I -
what does it feel like to participate
in such spaces?
Why are there only Chinese people
in such spaces?
Well, it's not really hard
to, um, to kind of deduce
because every time,
and each time I visit the RC,
you only hear Chinese karaoke songs
being played.
And I don't think any Malay or Indian person
would want to waste their precious time
belting out to tunes that they
are not really familiar with.
So that is why mosques became a successful
magnet to attract certain groups
of Malays in Singapore.
So Lee's statement reveals the
discursive formation of the
kampong spirit,
you know, as a space of Malayness
that was to be regarded
as less than complete
space of successful assimilation
into a multicultural society.
So, let you bring the kampong spirit.
If it's Chineseness,
that's what we welcome
but if it's anything else,
any minority representation
becomes suspicious.
On September 2007, at Mendaki's
25th anniversary dinner,
Lee Hsien Loong recalled that the government
and the Malay community leaders
were not sure whether the Malay community
could really cope with meritocracy
and compete with other Singaporeans.
Okay, in Singapore,
the stories that get remembered
are the ones that are constantly repeated.
Repetition begets its own reality.
On that dinner, PM Lee's narrative of
the Malays was no different than any other
state narratives of the Malay community.
It begins with the long arduous task
for the Malays to get here,
because we are from "there" right?
Um, the significant progress
that they have made in education,
increasing social mobility,
and then boom,
dysfunctional families,
unmarried pregnancies,
broken families, proverty,
et cetera.
But not to worry:
Malays should keep working hard
because the government is confident
that Malays can make it
the Singapore way.
So, in Singapore,
stress has been justified as a necessity
for the people to stay on the competitive
edge in order for the nation
to survive in a brave new world.
Yet, this acknowledgement
of stress onto various groups
in Singapore are not equally regarded.
The government's politicisation
of stress makes it difficult
for certain groups of Singaporeans
to articulate how stressful they are
without being labelled as "incapable"
or undeserving of assistance,
or relief.
For under privileged minorities,
stress is personalised as individual failure
or lack of resilience
while stress for the privileged
is validated as productive
and a badge of diligence.
It is worthwhile to note that the bulk
of the narratives that describe encounters
with the Pontianak
also profess the sentiments such as
"I was possessed
because I might have been tired from work"
or, "I had to stay in school until late"
or "come back from work late"
interestingly, in some of the narratives,
contributors also describe
feeling feverish and ill
after encountering the Pontianak.
Such symptoms of illness warrants
a day off from school or work
to cope with the trauma
of their frightening encounters.
This latent imagery of being exhausted
from school or work,
coupled with this haunting experience
of the Pontianak,
of being possessed
may describe the anxieties of being
in a stressful environment,
a common experience among Singaporeans.
Moreover, from my research,
the visibility of the Pontianak
in areas of high Malay numerical
sorry,
high Malay numerical populated areas
corresponding with medial
to low income housing areas
demonstrates cultural anxieties to survive
in a competitive capitalist economy.
In this manner, the Pontianak
may exist as a vehicle for the Malay
individual to express his or her anxieties
in a common space,
but private and secret enough,
and intimate enough,
that it escapes the scrutiny of the state.
Because any news of Malays
publicly complaining of Singapore's
highly stressed environment
may almost certainly invite
criticisms from the state
or even local Malay agencies
that the Malays possess some form of
cultural deficit.
We are easily contented lot,
or lazy as compared to the other races.
This culture of haunting reminds us
that the distinction between
conformity and resistance
in relation to the dominant Singapore story
of multi-racialism is hardly clear-cut.
On one hand,
stories that I hear reveals how pervaisve
the CMIO model is
and on the other, it reveals the ways in which
people reappropriate the limiting
structures that they are embedded in.
It reminds us that most of the times,
strategies to trouble mainstream narratives
are not always for or against power.
On the contrary, as activists,
the important lesson here
is that every day stories capture
new nuances in which people
find meaning in working
in and on dominant ideologies.
Maybe sometimes it is best
that stories begin out of nowhere
because not all characters
share the same beginning.
Searching for people's history
thus requires a return to a contested beginning.
Not of how the same story is told,
but rather, the point of which
another interpretation,
memory,
experience,
history,
was about to be forgotten,
and that we rescue it.
This is our intervention as Singaporeans.
To remember who we are
in the stories that we tell
and where and how a story is told.
Is it from a prison?
Or from a palace?
That is the key to harnessing power.
To fuck with it
so that everyone can have a piece of it.
Thank you so much.
[Applause]