“Do the Write Thing”: Writing Schizophrenia in Singapore

Abstract

This essay examines two recent memoirs of schizophrenia in Singapore: Chan Lishan’s A Philosopher’s Madness and Danielle Lim’s The Sound of Sch. The narratives, through the memoir form, question voice, agency, and self-making in a society in which colonial governing rationalities have now transformed into national and neoliberal ones.

Keywords:

• Singapore
• memoir
• life writing
• schizophrenia
• madness

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 109.

2 Jakobson, “Closing Statement,” 356.

3 Couser, Memoir, 23, 21.

4 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 76.

5 Couser, Memoir, 19.

6 Rak, “Are Memoirs Autobiography?” 484.

7 Couser, Memoir, 20.

8 Rak, “Are Memoirs Autobiography?” 484.

9 Wee, The Asian Modern, 8–9; Teo, Neoliberal Morality in Singapore, 3.

10 Ng, Till the Break of the Day.

11 Ng and Fung, Mental Health, xi.

12 One substantial resource for researchers, for instance, is the National Archives of Singapore’s Medical Services in Singapore Project, which commenced in 1997 and aims to cover “the experiences of medical pioneers.” The interviews in the project are useful in giving insights into the development of psychiatry and the experience of psychiatric nurses, but voices of the patients themselves are missing, despite the possibility of anonymity should the interviewee request it. See http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/

13 Zhuang, “Enabling the Singapore Story,” 54. Zhuang uses the term “disabled people” rather than the more common “people with disabilities” in Singapore in order to emphasize the social model in which disability, as opposed to impairment, is socially produced (“Inclusion in Singapore,” 624). Discussion of psychotic and neurotic conditions is even more fraught, given than any terminology that might be used is attached to larger discourses of wellness and identity. In order to keep possibilities of identification as broad as possible, I have thus used “living with mental illness and difference” in this essay.

14 Basset and Stickley, “Introduction,” 4.

15 Loh, “Mental Illness in Singapore,” 134.

16 Zhuang, “Enabling the Singapore Story,” 69.

17 Basset and Stickley, “Introduction,” 4. Poon discusses how “merit” in Singapore is centrally concerned with academic achievement, and how students with high academic achievements are sent abroad to top international universities on government scholarships, returning to take up positions in the civil service, where they are “typically fast-tracked and talent-managed to assume high-level positions” (“Narrating Privilege,” 415). The figure of the scholar in the popular imagination is thus often someone who is highly intelligent but lacking social skills and experience, and who often devalues the experience of those with whom he (or, less frequently, she) works.

18 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 71.

19 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 72.

20 Raoul et al., “Making Sense,” 5.

21 Zhuang, “Inclusion in Singapore,” 626.

22 Sherry, “Post(Colonising) Disability,” 10.

23 Brewer, “Coming out Mad,” 11, 14–15.

24 Brewer, “Coming out Mad,” 16–17.

25 Joseph, “The Necessity,” 1024.

26 Prendergast, “Mental Disability,” 65.

27 Rak, “Are Memoirs Autobiography?” 484.

28 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought, 11.

29 Chatterjee, The Nation, 10.

30 Chatterjee, The Nation, 26, 6.

31 McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 53.

32 Keller, Colonial Madness, 181; Heaton, “The Politics,” 315–316.

33 Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban; Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks.

34 Stoler, Duress, 166–167.

35 Holden, Autobiography and Decolonization, 36–38.

36 Rajaratnam, “Adaptive Reuse of History,” 252.

37 Rajaratnam, “Adaptive Reuse of History,” 253.

38 Rajaratnam, “Adaptive Reuse of History,” 252.

39 See, for example, the various essays attempting to assert Lim’s rightful place in Singapore’s historical narrative in the collection edited by K. S. Jomo and Tan Jin Quee, first published as Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History. While Tan’s essay “Lim Chin Siong: A Political Life” does mention Lim’s depression in jail and after being sent into exile in London, others refer to it euphemistically. Lim Hock Siew, for instance, simply notes that Lim became “seriously ill” (“Tribute,” 128).

40 Naruse and Gui, “Singapore,” 476.

41 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 140.

42 Read, “A Genealogy,” 27, 30.

43 Tan, “Choosing What to Remember,” 236.

44 Raoul et al., “Making Sense of Disease,” 5.

45 Mitchell and Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, 49, 63, 64.

46 Mitchell and Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, 47.

47 Qtd. in Tan, “Putting Mental Illness.”

48 Tan, “Putting Mental Illness.”

49 Couser, Memoir, 16.

50 Couser, “Body Language,” 3.

51 Couser, Memoir, 18.

52 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 8.

53 Lee, From Third World to First.

54 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 14–15.

55 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 17.

56 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 14.

57 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 16.

58 Poon, “Narrating Privilege,” 415; Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 226.

59 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 64.

60 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 63.

61 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 64.

62 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 42, 159.

63 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 24.

64 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 35, 103.

65 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 165.

66 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 153.

67 Couser, Memoir, 20.

68 Lim, The Sound of Sch, 152, 8.

69 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 11.

70 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 16.

71 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 17.

72 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 9.

73 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 8.

74 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 9.

75 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 15.

76 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 20.

77 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 20.

78 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 20.

79 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 67, 74.

80 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 82.

81 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 90.

82 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 90.

83 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 17.

84 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 40.

85 Chan, A Philosopher’s Madness, 45.

86 Schneider, “Constructing a ‘Schizophrenic’ Identity,” 131.

87 Schneider, “Constructing a ‘Schizophrenic’ Identity,” 131.

88 Rak, “Are Memoirs Autobiography?” 499.

89 Chan, “Notes.”