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ABSTRACT
Singapore’s postcolonial state formation process has combined the appeal/distress of a multiracial society with the nationalistic pride of economic development. In recent years, the city-state has witnessed a revival of Peranakan culture and history, referring to the descendants of early Chinese immigrants who integrated into Indigenous societies before becoming prized mediators for British colonisers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We question how these references are strategically deployed as part of the process of postcolonial state formation and how their aesthetic representations support public discussions and debates about what defines contemporary (Chinese) Singaporean identity. By examining Peranakan representations in the television series The Little Nyonya from a Deleuzian perspective, it will be argued that Peranakan history and culture are mobilised to de-territorialise previous meanings of national ethnic markers, specifically Chineseness, and to re-territorialise a local sense of Indigeneity. In reaction to concerns over Mainlander identity, representations of Peranakan culture and history in The Little Nyonya support the indigenisation of a specific Chinese identity that is accessible to all Singaporeans, offering an aesthetic framework in which the ongoing process of negotiating between Singapore’s national self and other unfolds.
Acknowledgements
A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2015 Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies conference and the authors thank the panelists and participants for their comments. The authors also thank Richard Van Delft for his research assistance, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their suggestions and comments. The arguments and conclusions presented here are their own and should not be attributed to anyone else.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Jean Michel Montsion is an Associate Professor in the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at York University on the ancestral territories of the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat and the Métis (Toronto, Canada). He researches questions of ethnicity and mobility in gateway cities like Singapore and Vancouver. He has published in Asian Ethnicity, Citizenship Studies, Geoforum, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Ajay Parasram is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of International Development Studies and History at Dalhousie University on the unceded Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) territories (Halifax, Canada). His research is focused on decolonial thought, political economy and territoriality in the South Asian context. He has published in Geopolitics and The Caribbean Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy.
Notes
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