Heng, Geraldine and Janadas Devan. 1992. “State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore.” In Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaeger (eds.), Nationalisms and Sexualities. New York: Routledge, p343-364.
The crises that Singapore periodically goes through is a reflection of postcolonial trauma, bent on reifying the sovereignty of the nation.
One such crisis that the essential condition of national survival is the regeneration of the population exactly as it was when it was founded. This crisis was expressed to the people through a speech from the Prime Minister, in which he accused highly-educated women as not 'doing their part' in having enough children to ensure self-replacement, whereas poorly educated women from minority ethnic groups where having too many children. The result: 'genetically-inferior' offspring. p.345
"The threat of an impending collapse in the social and economic order, for which an unruly, destabilising and irresponsible feminine sexuality was held to account, was covertly located at the intersecting registers of race and class." p.345
The Prime Ministers reliance on statistics for his societal outcome "merely evinces a concomitant desire for the human organism to function, also, like a machine." p.346
"A machine presupposes - indeed, requires - an operator, since a machine commonly exists in the first place in order to be operated" p.346
$10,000 was offered to working-class women - have two children and then be sterilised
Tax-break, insurance and educational policy generously preferred graduate women's children
"A sexualised, separate species of nationalism, in other words, was being advocated for women: as patriotic duty for men grew out of the barrel of a gun..., so it would grow, for women, out of the recesses of the womb" p.348-9
"the hidden stake in Lee's narrative of crisis, whose undisclosed object of concern was precisely the stable replication of the paternal signifier and its powers, this vision of women-led families struck at the core of state fatherhood itself, the institutional basis on which governmental patriarchy was posited" p.350
A danger of Western contamination led to the "retrieval of a superior, "core" Chinese culture in the name of a fantasmatic "Confucianism"; the promotion of Mandarin...; and the concoction of a "national ideology," grounded in a selective refiguration of Confucianism" p.351
If all Chinese Singaporeans spoke Mandarin, "they could communicate without the use of English across dialect boundaries; Chinese values would be disseminated without the dilution and distraction that multiple dialects threaten, and the auditory unity of a common tongue would assuage the dangers of the West." p.351
Speaking English originally was seen as a sign of development and education. Lee turned that on its head and decried its stifling of Chinese culture.
"Differences within cultures and races - and the conflation of these two terms is a necessary gesture in the essentialist discourse of nationalism - are converted into differences between cultures and races, into differences that strategically serve to distinguish valid, enabling, or potent cultural identities from those other identities represented as seductive and disabling, subverting the firmness of national purpose." p353
The crises that Singapore periodically goes through is a reflection of postcolonial trauma, bent on reifying the sovereignty of the nation.
One such crisis that the essential condition of national survival is the regeneration of the population exactly as it was when it was founded. This crisis was expressed to the people through a speech from the Prime Minister, in which he accused highly-educated women as not 'doing their part' in having enough children to ensure self-replacement, whereas poorly educated women from minority ethnic groups where having too many children. The result: 'genetically-inferior' offspring. p.345
"The threat of an impending collapse in the social and economic order, for which an unruly, destabilising and irresponsible feminine sexuality was held to account, was covertly located at the intersecting registers of race and class." p.345
The Prime Ministers reliance on statistics for his societal outcome "merely evinces a concomitant desire for the human organism to function, also, like a machine." p.346
"A machine presupposes - indeed, requires - an operator, since a machine commonly exists in the first place in order to be operated" p.346
$10,000 was offered to working-class women - have two children and then be sterilised
Tax-break, insurance and educational policy generously preferred graduate women's children
"A sexualised, separate species of nationalism, in other words, was being advocated for women: as patriotic duty for men grew out of the barrel of a gun..., so it would grow, for women, out of the recesses of the womb" p.348-9
"the hidden stake in Lee's narrative of crisis, whose undisclosed object of concern was precisely the stable replication of the paternal signifier and its powers, this vision of women-led families struck at the core of state fatherhood itself, the institutional basis on which governmental patriarchy was posited" p.350
A danger of Western contamination led to the "retrieval of a superior, "core" Chinese culture in the name of a fantasmatic "Confucianism"; the promotion of Mandarin...; and the concoction of a "national ideology," grounded in a selective refiguration of Confucianism" p.351
If all Chinese Singaporeans spoke Mandarin, "they could communicate without the use of English across dialect boundaries; Chinese values would be disseminated without the dilution and distraction that multiple dialects threaten, and the auditory unity of a common tongue would assuage the dangers of the West." p.351
Speaking English originally was seen as a sign of development and education. Lee turned that on its head and decried its stifling of Chinese culture.
"Differences within cultures and races - and the conflation of these two terms is a necessary gesture in the essentialist discourse of nationalism - are converted into differences between cultures and races, into differences that strategically serve to distinguish valid, enabling, or potent cultural identities from those other identities represented as seductive and disabling, subverting the firmness of national purpose." p353
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