Tears and Garlands: Lim Chin Siong, Coldstore, and the End(s) of Narrative

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the role of biography in contemporary remembrance of the moment of decolonisation in Singapore. To challenge a hegemonic developmental narrative told through the biography of Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, many popular and academic historians have focused on the lives of political figures previously written out of history. Most notable among these is the opposition leader Lim Chin Siong, who was detained in 1963 in Operation Coldstore, one of several waves of detentions by the security forces during Singapore's transition from internal self government in 1959, through membership of the Malaysian Federation in 1963, to independent nationhood in 1965. Such acts of storytelling, however, while having an important status as testimony, often simply invert the dominant narrative, trapping their protagonists in a new series of historical binarisms. In contrast, life writing in media less closely wedded to narrative, such as poetry and photography, has perhaps a more radical ability to ask questions of history, through a focus not on storytelling but on images extracted from contexts, on the moment before narrative starts.