Singapore’s bicentennial commemoration has led to a public discussion on the manner in which British colonisers constructed Southeast Asian natives as their Other in discourse and narrative. One way in which the Other has been expressed in literature is through the motif of ‘the double,’ which spans stories about the evil twin, corrupt clone, depraved doppelganger, and nefarious nemesis. This reading workshop aims to demystify and decolonise the process of Othering in prose by engaging with works from the non-West.

Texts to be used: • Singapore: "The Ultimate Commodity" (1981) by Gopal Baratham, the entire short story • Europe: The Double (2014) by Jose Saramago, excerpts from the novel • America/India: “Sexy” (1999) by Jhumpa Lahiri, the entire short story • India: The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy, excerpts from the novel • Non-fiction: • “The Colonial Art of Telling Tales” (2019) by Nazry Bahrawi, a chapter from 200 Years of Singapore and the United Kingdom

This session is co-presented with Singapore Book Council.

Speakers:

Nazry Bahrawi

Dr Nazry Bahrawi is senior lecturer at Singapore University of Technology and Design, specialising in the study of Muslim texts and thoughts along the Indian Ocean. He is an associate editor of Critical Muslim and a co-founder of the Bras Basah Open, a collective for discussing critical theory and philosophy in Singapore. He has translated two Malay literary works into English, while his op-ed commentaries have appeared in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, South China Morning Post and Today.

Michelle Chiang

Michelle Chiang is Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University, School of Humanities. She has published articles and book chapters on the intersection between literature and the philosophy of time and mind. Her latest book is Samuel Beckett’s Intuitive Spectator: Me to Play (2018).