#WhySingLit: Singapore literature's coming of age
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1) sense of rootedness and identity
When you read about characters who look like you, whose names look like yours with a "bin" or "d/o" or are basically just more than two words, something different happens in your brain. When you hear the familiar lilt of Singlish, when you read the dialogue off the page in an accent you don't have to fake, fireworks go off somewhere between your eyes and your cerebrum. This is called identification - when you see yourself or characters familiar to your sense of self being written into the page, and granted that greater level of validation of being deemed worthy enough to be written about.
2) mutli-faceted views / mutliple perspectives
And finally, when so much of our modern population consumes news and information from biased, single-minded sources in their respective echo chambers, does it not behoove us to encourage reading of texts that contain more than one correct answer? That approach issues with complexity rather than declaring a simplistic moral of the story?
3) maturity of thinking, empathy, engaging views that are incompatible with ours, break prejudice?
Because that is the last thing Singapore literature can give us: a sense of nuance about the issues that confront us daily. The willingness to suspend our disbelief and accept views that are incongruent with our own, and to at least entertain, if not engage, them. Doesn't that sound like a mature, informed electorate with the ability to assess and dismiss the platitudes of loud-mouthed, wrong-headed demagogues hovering beyond the horizon?
For Qns on the value of studying literature or the role of the arts....
1) sense of rootedness and identity
When you read about characters who look like you, whose names look like yours with a "bin" or "d/o" or are basically just more than two words, something different happens in your brain. When you hear the familiar lilt of Singlish, when you read the dialogue off the page in an accent you don't have to fake, fireworks go off somewhere between your eyes and your cerebrum. This is called identification - when you see yourself or characters familiar to your sense of self being written into the page, and granted that greater level of validation of being deemed worthy enough to be written about.
2) mutli-faceted views / mutliple perspectives
And finally, when so much of our modern population consumes news and information from biased, single-minded sources in their respective echo chambers, does it not behoove us to encourage reading of texts that contain more than one correct answer? That approach issues with complexity rather than declaring a simplistic moral of the story?
3) maturity of thinking, empathy, engaging views that are incompatible with ours, break prejudice?
Because that is the last thing Singapore literature can give us: a sense of nuance about the issues that confront us daily. The willingness to suspend our disbelief and accept views that are incongruent with our own, and to at least entertain, if not engage, them. Doesn't that sound like a mature, informed electorate with the ability to assess and dismiss the platitudes of loud-mouthed, wrong-headed demagogues hovering beyond the horizon?
For Qns on the value of studying literature or the role of the arts....
posted by Dark Shadow | 12:05 AM
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