Singapore: bridgehead of the West or counterforce? The s[t]imulation of creative and critical thought in Singapore’s higher education policies

Abstract

This paper argues that the welcoming by western humanists of pedagogies of critical and creative thinking in Asian universities – as if such thinking will breed an eastern counter‐voice to western neo‐liberalism – is misguided. The paper will question the rise of creative and critical thinking in higher education in Asia by analysing the intersections of the neo‐liberal economy, new media technologies, and such new ‘thinking’ in the post‐colonial context of Singapore and its national university. The paper will conclude that in the new hegemonic configuration under technological acceleration, higher education becomes a nationalist and globalist project in which privileged Singaporean students constitute the new ‘upwardly mobile’ by branding themselves as ‘creative Asians’.

Keywords:

• critical thinking
• acceleration
• Heidegger
• Singapore
• post‐colonialism
• Spivak