What is a Merdeka History? (Live Webinar)
Event Information
About this Event
This is a free webinar that will be available to watch on the Ethos Books Facebook page on Saturday, 6 February, 10.30AM - 12PM.
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"More than anything else, ‘Merdeka!’ was the urgent claim to the right to determine the future of one’s own country.” —Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History
The word ‘Merdeka’ has since been largely erased from Singapore’s vocabulary for half a century, save for an instance with the 2019 Merdeka generation package. Why had a word of such powerful resonance faded in people’s consciousness? And what is the importance of a Merdeka history? This webinar features contributors to Raffles Renounced, moderated by historian Hong Lysa.
Please message Ethos Books on Facebook if you require any access needs (e.g. live captions, sign language interpreting). We are currently working on providing note-taking and SgSL interpretation for this webinar, and will make an announcement when we’ve confirmed this. All are welcome and we would love to have you with us!
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About the Book:
Why did independent Singapore celebrate two hundred years of its founding as a British colony in 2019? What does Merdeka mean for Singaporeans? And what are the possibilities of doing decolonial history in Singapore? Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History presents essays by historians, literary scholars and artists which grapple with these questions. The volume also reproduces some of the source material used in the play Merdeka / 獨立 / சுதந்திரம் (Wild Rice, 2019). Taken together, the book shows how the contradictions of independent nationhood haunt Singaporeans' collective and personal stories about Merdeka. It points to the need for a Merdeka history: an open and fearless culture of historical reckoning that not only untangles us from colonial narratives, but proposes emancipatory possibilities.
Find out more about Raffles Renounced at bit.ly/rafflesrenounced
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About the Panel:
Alfian Sa’at is the Resident Playwright of Wild Rice. His plays with Wild Rice include Hotel (with Marcia Vanderstraaten), The Asian Boys Trilogy, Cooling-Off Day, The Optic Trilogy, Homesick and Merdeka / 獨立 / சுதந்திரம் (with Neo Hai Bin). He was the winner of the Golden Point Award for Poetry and the National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature in 2001. His publications include Collected Plays One, Two, and Three; poetry collections One Fierce Hour, A History of Amnesia and The Invisible Manuscript; and short-story collections Corridor and Malay Sketches.
Faris Joraimi is pursuing his BA(Hons) in History at Yale-NUS College. His research interests lie in the narrative traditions, cultural politics and intellectual history of the Malay world. He hopes to pursue graduate studies and explore ways in which texts and their materiality reflect broader processes of exchange, circulation and consumption in the early modern Nusantara. He has written for a number of platforms, including s/pores, Mynah Magazine, New Naratif, Karyawan, Passage, Budi Kritik and 天下 (Commonwealth Magazine, Taiwan).
Sai Siew Min is a Taipei-based Singaporean historian who researches Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia with a focus on imperial formation in Southeast Asia, the cultural politics of colonialism and nationalism, language, race and Chineseness. She is a founder member of the s/pores collective. Her essays on historiography in Singapore have appeared online in s/pores: new directions in Singapore Studies. Her academic writings have appeared in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Journal of Chinese Overseas, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. She is also co-editor of the book Reassessing Chinese Indonesians: History, Religion and Belonging.
Joanne Leow lives as a guest on Treaty Six Territory and the homeland of the Métis. She is Assistant Professor of decolonising, diasporic, and transnational literatures at the University of Saskatchewan. Her most recent research on transnational Asian literature and film, and diasporic Canadian literature can be found in positions: asia critique, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, University of Toronto Quarterly and Journal of Asian American Studies. Her first book manuscript theorises the intersections between cultural dissidence and urban planning in Singapore. Her essays, fiction and poetry have been published in Brick, Catapult, The Goose, Isle, The Kindling, The Town Crier, QLRS and Ricepaper Magazine. She received funding from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to complete her ecocritical project, “Intertidal Polyphonies” (intertidal.usask.ca).
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About the Moderator:
Hong Lysa, a historian, is co-author of The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), and co-editor of The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore (2013); The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s (2011) and Poh Soo Kai, Living in a Time of Deception (2016). She is a founder member of the electronic journal s/pores: New Directions in Singapore Studies which commenced publication in 2007.
