Self-Renewal

In his article 'Embodying Society's Best: Hegel and the Singapore State' in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol.36 No.3 (2006), [pp.283-304], Terence Chong dedicates a section to 'The Self Renewal of the PAP State' [pp.298-301] in which he emphasizes how Gramscian hegemonic interpretations have not adequately addressed the PAP State's success with the recruitment, grooming and retention of talent. He notes how its leadership is obsessed with the procurement of youthful vigour:

'The political leadership must, therefore, rejuvenate itself with the infusion of younger men and women who are able to connect and empathise with them.' Speech by Mr Wong Kan Seng, Minister for Home Affairs and MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC at the Bishan East National Day Dinner, 7 Aug 2004.

Rejuvenation through infusion invokes the image of bared fangs against necks and the empathising that comes from staring into hypnotic bloodshot eyes; it is the renewal of the Self, the Old Self rather than to acknowledge the political Other or the Stranger. After all, the objective of such infusions of new blood is not to change in order to address the aspirations and concerns of the new generation but to manage them, to give sustenance to the old hegemonic project.

Or what Yao Souchou, in his recently published book, has called '"the totalitarian ambition": the unfulfilled desire to define and shape all human aspirations and all things social and political.' [Singapore: The State and the culture of excess (Oxon, Routledge: 2007), p.176] This imagery is fed by the perception that previously critical figures who have been co-opted now work to fulfill that totalitarian ambition, as if under the spell of the prime/senior/mentor vampire, with promises of superhuman powers and the eternal life sustained by carefully selected providers of fresh blood.

Metaphorical Corpses

'Following this [selection] process, the Singaporean elite was littered with the metaphorical corpses of political discards and there was a heightened degree of passive hostility to involvement in government by much of the nation's elite.' Ross Worthington, Governance in Singapore (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p.60.

Even as bloggers discuss the political need for, effectiveness or broadened definition of an alternative elite, Worthington suggests that many have either refused the call to tea or accepted and have been ruthlessly discarded - but to what extent are they really 'metaphorical corpses'? Worthington has accurately captured the strange political deaths of these 'discards' but his account also reinforces the ruling party's discursive power in deciding who is or isn't talented by repeating and reaffirming its interpretations as pragmatic realism conflated with reality and thus shutting out other possibilities.

The recirculation, in varying degrees, of these metaphorical corposes back into civil/civic society indicates that these metaphorical corpses continue to shuffle about. Some may have been drained completely like ghouls or zombies. Others may yet have more political life and fight in them still, returning from their interview/date with the/a vampire with a better understanding of the inner workings of the coven and its vampire lords. Perhaps a more interesting question would be: can such metaphorical corpses be reanimated into political life? What will be the best strategies to get them to defect?

The Undying National Father

'Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.' Mr Lee Kuan Yew, quoted in the Straits Times, 15 August 1988.

This 'touch of the ghoulish' is quoted by and explicated by Yao:

'...the undying National Father remains richly meaningful. Nothing is more suggestive of the wise benevolence of the elderly than their unceasing duty of care - even from the grave... If the National Father is symbolic of all that is constant and good, then he has to live on for ever. His eternal life freezes all the principles that he has bestowed on the nation, and refurbishes the national ethos in danger by the end of [H]istory. The National Father of eternal life halts the end of [H]istory and, through his continuing, energetic cajoling, arrests the end of human struggle as a meaningful and fertile undertaking for the future.' [pp.175-6]

In the context of the imagery of this post, such vigour and energy is not indicative of eternal life but of eternal undeath. The hegemonic discourse constantly urges Singaporeans to change, to upgrade, to adapt, and yet the reverse applies to the loci of the hegemonic project which emphasizes preservation, conservation, fixity; not because of but despite of, in defiance of the dawn. And such is the power of wise benevolence that the sun has been kept at bay despite occasionally the barest hints of an eventual false dawn. Perhaps this too shall pass but there is no inevitability that the sun will rise, contingent as it is on historical and social factors as well as on invitation to tea and its myriad aftermaths.