There’s Sand in My Infinity Pool: Land Reclamation and the Rewriting of Singapore

Abstract

“There’s Sand in My Infinity Pool” explores land reclamation in Singapore as a speculative material and cultural practice. Typically presented as either a practical engineering feat or an ecologically disastrous approach to coastal development, the significance of land reclamation in the cultural formation of identity and landscape has yet to be addressed. Given the ongoing and speculative nature of land reclamation, this practice-led research seeks to position land reclamation as a form of writing to identify the rewritten boundaries of memory and identity, unearthing the unacknowledged implications of land reclamation as a material and cultural practice in the formation of national identity. Sourced from interviews, ethnographic accounts, and autoethnography, the narratives examine what it means to live with and through land reclamation. The “breakwater” widens the field of conceptual enquiry, juxtaposing ideas from human geography, literary criticism, and critical theory to widen the framework for interrogating this practice of nation building.

“我的无边际泳池中有沙”探讨新加坡的造陆工程作为思辨物质与文化实践。造陆一般不是被呈现为务实的工程壮举，便是海岸开发的生态浩劫，而其在身份认同与地景的文化形构中的重要性，却尚未进行处理。有鉴于持续进行中的造陆及其思辨本质，此一由实践所引领的研究计画，企图将造陆定位为书写的形式，指认尚未划定疆界的记忆与身份认同，将造陆未被认识到的意涵揭露作为国族认同形构中的物质与文化实践。这些叙事源自于访谈，民族志记述，以及自我民族志，检视何谓与造陆共生，并透过造陆生存。“防波堤”开展了概念性探讨的领域，并置人文地理学，文学批评，以及批判理论的概念，以拓展探讨此般国族建构实践的框架。

La expresión “Hay arena en mi reserva infinita” explora la recuperación de tierras en Singapur como material especulativo y práctica cultural. Así se la presente típicamente como proeza de ingeniería práctica o como enfoque de desarrollo costero ecológicamente desastroso, la importancia de la recuperación de tierras en la formación cultural de identidad y de paisaje todavía está por abocarse. Dada la naturaleza actual y especulativa de la recuperación de tierras, esta investigación orientada a lo práctico busca posicionar este tipo de programa como una forma de escribir para identificar los límites redibujados de memoria e identidad, desenterrando las implicaciones no reconocidas de la recuperación de tierras como una práctica material y cultural de la formación de la identidad nacional. Documentadas con entrevistas, registros etnográficos y auto-etnografía, las narrativas examinan lo que significa coexistir con esta práctica de recuperación y vivir dependiendo de la misma. El “malecón” amplía el campo de la indagación conceptual, yuxtaponiendo ideas extraídas de la geografía humana, de la crítica literaria y la teoría crítica a fin de ensanchar el marco a través del cual interrogar esta práctica de construcción de nación.

Key Words:

• fiction
• land reclamation
• landscape
• national identity
• Singapore

• 小说
• 填海造陆
• 地景
• 国族认同
• 新加坡

• ficción
• recuperación de tierras
• paisaje
• identidad nacional
• Singapur

Notes

1. This is a Malay word meaning a small village or community of houses.

2. This is a Malay word for any offshore structure used by fishermen.

3. This is Singlish slang for “government,” often used pejoratively or ironically to denote opposition.

4. The Bukit Ho Swee Fire in 1961 destroyed around 2,800 houses in a squatter settlement, prompting the HDB’s first resettlement and public housing project. Subsequent resettlements would be modeled on the emergency of Bukit Ho Swee. In the politically febrile state of pre-independence, a few Singaporeans thought the fire was a government conspiracy to break up and properly police subversive political groups. For a full discussion of various conspiracy theories around the Bukit Ho Swee Fire, see “Fires and the Social Politics of National-Building in Singapore” (Loh 2009).

5. This is a Singlish word meaning dense or idiotic, derived from Malay or Tamil.

6. This is a Chinese liqueur distilled from rice, popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Illicitly produced samshu was more popular, as it had a higher alcohol content.

7. This is the compulsory conscription of men into uniformed services that came into practice in 1967.

8. Chia Thye Poh, a Barisan Sosialis politician, was convicted of publishing a seditious article in July 1966, and subsequently imprisoned without trial as part of Operation Cold Store on 29 October 1966 (Seow 1998). Detained for twenty-three years, he is Singapore’s longest serving political prisoner. The Plebeian was the newspaper of the Barisan Sosialis (Mutalib 2004).

9. Apparently, a condensed milk can’s worth of worms harvested from nearby St. John’s island was enough to repopulate the new East Coast Beach with bait, according to Lee Chong Keng (Leong and Lim 2006, 26).

10. This is salt-cured anchovy used in Malay cuisine, literally “little fish.”

11. Walking along the Bedok Jetty toward the end of my field work, I stopped to talk to one of the few people still out fishing. He hadn’t remembered the reclamation, or the beach that preceded this one. Instead he told me about the typical woes Singapore faced: things always busier than they used to be, more people on the bus, on the MRT. Then he paused, and a lightbulb turned on: “If you want more personal space, you put in your headphones.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William Jamieson

WILLIAM JAMIESON is a writer and researcher who has recently graduated from University College London with an MSc in Urban Studies. E-mail: [email protected]. His research centers on the application of literary theory to human geography through critical creative writing interventions, and spatial practices of land reclamation and resource extraction in Southeast Asia. He has had fiction published in Myths of the Near Future and Smiths, and has fiction forthcoming in Ambit.