Mediating 'Progress': The National Narrative of Economic Development and Liberalism in Singapore

Abstract

Singapore is unique in the extent to which the People's Action Party (PAP) government has socio-culturally re-engineered society for economic development. The hegemonic historical narrative of commercial-industrial emergence - one in which 'national' identity is taken to be economic identity - reflects this purpose. This article examines the cultural logic underlying such a post-colonial narration of modernity. It argues, first, that while the PAP wanted independence, this did not stop an appreciation of the inherited colonial modernity; and, second, that what reinforced a pro-capitalist narration of modern arrival was the change in the global economy from the stable economic formation of the immediate post-war period to a world that resembles part of the laissez-faire world under Pax Britannica . Earlier post-colonial cultural studies looked at how Western imperialism produced 'the rest of the world'; this article argues that it is time to look at how the non-Western world 'produces' itself out of the same imperial experience.