Affectation in the Affect Nation: The Re-arrival of Singapore's Affective Laborers

IF 0.4 2区文学 0 LITERATURE

ARIEL-A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LITERATURE Pub Date : 2023-07-01 DOI:10.1353/ari.2023.a905709

Eunice Ying Ci Lim

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Abstract

Abstract:Notorious for its ever-changing urban landscape, Singapore has seen plenty of projects in recent years to archive disappearing sites and the stories people have about them. While archival work and collective memory formations are commendable, the affective labor that goes into these projects risks uncritically reproducing existing structures of feeling that fuel the nation's postcolonial triumphalist narrative. This narrative is characteristically dependent on the planned obsolescence of these sites and the nostalgia that neoliberal industries then eagerly monetize. Through a close literary analysis of Charmaine Leung's 2017 memoir 17A Keong Saik Road, this essay builds on Raymond Williams' concept of structures of feeling and Sara Ahmed's notion of affect aliens to make sense of Singapore's affective regimes and interventions. I argue that place-based literature may reclaim the affects that are foundational to Singapore's postcolonial triumphalist narrative from the state's affective determinations. By highlighting the intergenerational, gendered, affective labors of those involved in the sex industry, Leung's recounting of her childhood in this historical red-light district frees the titular Keong Saik Road, the sex workers who formerly inhabited this site, and Cantonese—one of the undermined non-Mandarin Sinitic languages of Singapore—from the existing scripted affective discourses of the postcolonial nation.

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情感民族的情感：新加坡情感劳动者的重新到来

摘要：新加坡以其不断变化的城市景观而闻名，近年来，新加坡开展了大量项目，将消失的遗址和人们对它们的故事存档。虽然档案工作和集体记忆的形成值得称赞，但这些项目中的情感劳动有可能不加批判地复制现有的情感结构，这些结构为国家的后殖民必胜叙事提供了燃料。这种叙事的特点是依赖于这些网站的过时计划，以及新自由主义行业随后急切地将其货币化的怀旧情绪。本文通过对梁2017年回忆录《强赛路17A》的文学分析，以Raymond Williams的情感结构概念和Sara Ahmed的情感外星人概念为基础，理解新加坡的情感制度和干预措施。我认为，基于地方的文学可能会从国家的情感决定中重新获得新加坡后殖民必胜主义叙事的基础影响。通过强调性产业参与者的代际、性别和情感劳动，梁讲述了她在这个历史红灯区的童年，解放了名义上的强赛路，以前居住在这个地方的性工作者，以及广东话——一种被削弱的新加坡非华语——来自这个后殖民国家现有的脚本化情感话语。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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ARIEL-A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LITERATURE LITERATURE-

CiteScore

0.70

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0.00%

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