The Oedipal Fantasy of Father Figures (A Slice of Satire)

Kuan Yew is so powerful that he can be right when he claims to be wrong.

Kuan Yew is language.

But for the record, Kuan Yew has never quite said that bilingualism was wrong. He thinks that Mandarin has been taught in the wrong manner, but this is in no way an admission that bilingualism was, at its core, wrong. What a great chance to aggrandize the legendary status of Kuan Yew though! He is now such a great leader that he is not afraid to say that he is wrong.

Kuan Yew, so full of wisdom as always, has denied Singapore of its unborn/undead Conrads and Nabokovs. “Nobody can master two languages at the same level,” he claims, citing his daughter. Perhaps not the same level, if it was ever really about mastering them at the same level, but how about mastering two languages nevertheless?

“It doesn’t matter what level [students] reach, they will like the language [if the lessons are engaging], it’s fun and later on in life they’ll use it,” Kuan Yew says about the teaching of Mandarin.

Why bilingualism, still? But let’s first ask ourselves, what bilingualism? For it is not simply a matter of learning two languages. Even if English as the first language is a given, there have always been only limited choices for one’s second language.

What is the state’s definition of a language learned? We have English as the first language, and we have Mandarin as one of the second languages. “Mother tongue,” they call it, with unabashed intimacy even if most mothers at one point in the past merely spoke dialects. But the supposed tongues of our mothers seem to come from a world so different that we have difficulty making them our own while the tongues that really belonged to our mothers were cut and banned from pubic broadcast. A seconded language rather than a second language. And yet, we have to submit to a stepmother tongue while gazing towards China, perhaps an ex-motherland. We are told we need to have a Stepmother Tongue for a disowned motherland. And despite all these familial but unfamiliar posturing, it is for the sake of business, we are also told. Speak the language of the Hans. Little Hans fearful of severance, embracing surrogate mothers, pleasing fathers.

And the first language is, for those who are brought up by people who speak no English, not the first language they speak; and for many others, it is in fact a second English to the Singlish that they have picked up. But Singlish is wrong, we are told. We have to learn Standard English, when there is no single standard for English. And it is the language of business too.

It would seem then that there we are handicaps when it comes to languages of persons. We only have languages of functions. Language is always reducible to a function, a prosthesis of bankrupt selves instead of being integral to these selves and enriching them. And languages are always borrowed, like the toolbox one might borrow from one’s neighbor. We can master English without being a master of English—in other words, without taking ownership of it, not to mention being one with it. Perhaps our bilingualism is nonlingualism. I have suspected for some time already, that I am semi-illiterate, if not fully so.

All for the greater good, surely. The state only needs businesmachines, not businessmen and certainly, certainly not people of language, people who can decide to be who they are. Except perhaps for the few who can be held up as evidence that Singapore has a really vibrant literary scene.

Was the state wrong in the implementation of how Mandarin was/is taught (and it is a banal point Kuan Yew is making since everyone knows that interesting lessons are better than boring ones) or is it still wrong (willfully?) in its primary approach to language?

Harmony and Difference

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller. The moral of his stories were invariably about harmony. One day, someone regurgitated his plots and spun them, perhaps unintentionally, into tales of equality. This enraged the veteran storyteller who threw a hissy fit and yelled, “You are telling my stories wrongly!”

“But these stories are not yours.” one wished the second storyteller had retorted. “You are just another storyteller.”

As though the staleness of PM Lee’s National Day Rally about harmony (the racial and religious species, what else?) is not enough, many contribute their reverberations, adding stench to staleness. But suddenly, MM Lee seems strangely agitated about an NMP’s advocacy of equal treatment of all races?

Now, it might have seemed to many people to be quite politically correct to want all races to be treated equally. Surely, one might ask, the PAP which is so obsessed with racial harmony would have no problems with racial equality? As such, MM Lee’s strong reaction to Viswa Sadasivan’s view might seem rather odd at first. Is MM Lee against racial equality? Yes, if we assume that racial equality involves the equal treatment of all races. In a nutshell, MM Lee’s view is that the different races cannot be treated equally because the government has be sensitive towards minority races and take action or have policies that will reassure minorities that they will not be discriminated against.

And if we go on, we will be going in circles for the strength of Viswa Sadasivan’s point is precisely that if the government persists in the stance MM Lee has elucidated, racialcategories will become further entrenched. And Sadasivan probably has a problem with this because the emphasis on racial categories will ensure that the consciousness of race and of the perceived differences will always be present. Understandably, for a government that has played the race card for its strategic political benefit, any call to eliminate the need for racial categories is a travesty.

What we have are simply two positions but an uncannily common standpoint at their core. While Sadasivan talks about equality, MM Lee talks about non-discrimination, which in fact draws from discourses of equality. One says that there is no true equality if race continues to be visible, if the walls of race continue to be painted and repainted. The other says that, in practice, we cannot simply pretend that we have attained the ideal situation in which no one is bothered by what they consider to be race.

Perhaps it is not the difference in the two men’s positions that is significant. Perhaps the issue of equality as articulated by Sadasivan threatens to hit a sensitive spot in the discourse of harmony as propagated by the government. Suddenly, Singaporeans might be reminded that harmony is different from equality. It is possible for me live harmoniously with you even if I am (or you are) suffering social injustices. At the same time, you and I might be equals but we squabble from time to time. Which do you find preferable? (I do not mean that any racial group in Singapore is suffering injustices. This is just an illustration to distinguish the ideas of harmony and equality.)

Difference is an essential precondition of harmony. We can harmonize because there is you and I, because there is an other. With harmony is always the possibility of discordance; there is always a threat of sorts. If no one perceives difference, then the notion of harmony has to go. How painful that would be for someone who has built an entire city on that notion, who has made skyscrapers from the bricks of difference! More tragically, what would happen if people living in these glittery skyscrapers suddenly reject the buildings, the apartment-compartments, that have been built for them and in which they have been placed with a heavy hand. Worse, what if the inhabitants of the harmonious city decide to hire architects of their own?

Never throw away a child’s Lego set. It is devastating.

But is harmony not just harmony? Of course, but perhaps not. Perhaps harmony is not even harmony. The moment harmony is divided into types, with most types being invisible, there is silent disharmony. Or silenced disharmony. Racial harmony. Religious harmony. Why not gender harmony, for instance? Because, as a storyteller explains, many years ago, there were racial riots. And people died! So racial issues must be handled sensitively. Someone ought to send that storyteller to jail for sedition. For surely he is inciting riots on the basis of gender. What else? If we accord “racial harmony” importance because of racial riots, what is there to stop people from starting gender (or any other kinds of riots resulting in violence and deaths, something we fear so much?

The MM-NMP argument is ultimately not a racial issue. It is a political issue (as always). I feel as if I’m contributing staleness too. (But what else one have to offer?) When PM Lee warns of the danger of playing the racial/religious card (such as in the case of a group of Christians taking over AWARE), is he not playing the racial/religious card in a different way, not in the sense of being affiliated to any race or religion but in the sense of deploying race and religion to exact political benefits such as the restrictions on free expression on the part of the people. (Oh, but of course there is freedom of expression in Singapore, if you dare say this. Oh, but you are just been taken in by those Western ideals that simply don’t apply, if you persist in saying this. Of course we are democratic! .  . . We are not democratic because we are different from the West!)

I wonder if MM Lee remembered that he was telling someone from a minority race that he knew better what minority races need.

Bring people back to earth by all means, but please do not drag people down to hell.