Saturday, 23 January 2010, 1:57 am | 0 views
Wong Chun Han / Pictures courtesy of
Asia Research
Institute, NUS
Rather than shedding light on the unfamiliar chapters of
Singapore’s political history, the authors and publishers of
Men in White have kept readers in the dark in some
regards, scholars argued.
According to literature scholar
Philip Holden and historian Hong
Lysa, significant historical silences were evident in
the 692-page tome on the history of the People’s Action Party
published last September by Singapore Press Holdings.
Particularly noteworthy was the book’s failure to discuss
important political issues such as merger with Malaysia and women’s
rights, said the scholars at the National Library last
Saturday.
Their assessments were well-received by over 100 people in
attendance at ‘Men in Black or White:
History as Media Event in Singapore’, a public seminar
jointly organised by the National University of Singapore’s
Asia Research Institute and the National Library.
Billed by organisers as the first public forum to examine
Men in White as “a sensation generated from the
intersection between history and the mass media”, the seminar
assembled three speakers – Holden, Hong and former Straits
Times journalist Tan Tarn How –
to critique the book and the media attention on its
publication.
Approaching from a
historian’s perspective, Hong, an independent scholar and former
member of the NUS History department, criticised the book’s
inadequate discussion of the issue of merger with Malaysia.
The political, social and economic implications of the merger
were not discussed, despite their central importance to Singaporean
and PAP history of the 1960s, said Hong. Also notably absent were
clarifications about the specific motivations of the 13 PAP
legislative assemblymen who abstained on the motion of confidence
on the government in July 1961.
Hong also noted the book’s particular concern for the political
events of the 1950s and 1960s and the question of whether Lim Chin
Siong and other Barisan Socialis members were communists. This, she
suggested, may represent an attempt by the book’s authors to
dismiss the story of the PAP’s “sullied birth”.
The arrest of leading Barisan Socialis members during Operation
Coldstore in February 1963 would have blemished the PAP electoral
victory in September, if those arrested were not branded as
communist subversives. Questions would thus have remained over the
legitimacy of the PAP’s victory, which arguably was facilitated by
the weakening of the Barisan Socialis, she explained.
The book’s silence on significant political events and themes
was also a letdown for Holden, an associate professor with the NUS
English language and literature department.
Particularly disappointing for him was the failure to discuss
events like the PAP’s resignation from
Socialist International in 1976, Devan
Nair’s resignation from the Presidency in 1985 and
Operation
Spectrum in 1987.
Holden also noted the superficial involvement of women in the
Men in White narrative. Issues of gender equality were not
discussed, nor were there any mention of the Women’s Charter, which
passed into law in 1961. Notable female PAP members such as
Dr Aline Wong
were omitted altogether.
Women were reduced to mere signs, he argued, serving as symbols
of social progress rather than historical actors in the PAP story,
and providing a foil for men to define themselves against.
Suggesting that this could be the result of an unconscious
reversion to gender stereotypes by the authors, Holden felt that
the book and its title was underpinned by a definition of
masculinity as the possession of integrity and character –
qualities which those who oppose the PAP are alleged to lack.
Besides these omissions in the book, there were also issues with
how Men in White was presented and discussed in the media,
according to Tan, a senior research fellow at the Institute of
Policy Studies studying Singapore’s media and arts policy.
Although conceding that the Straits Times was capable
of good journalism when not restrained by government and corporate
interests, he felt that its reporting in this instance was “mostly
PR and not journalism”.
Noting that the total SPH coverage of Men in White
amounted to about 50,000 words, he described the effort as
“extensive” and “breathless”, carrying “a warm fuzzyness” about
it.
In contrast, the SPH
coverage of the publication of The Fajar
Generation, a collection of essays by former
members of the University of Malaya Socialist Club, “never really
engaged with what is being said [in the book]” and avoided
discussing its content, said Tan.
He argued, extrapolating from the example of the Men in
White coverage, that both the local mainstream and online
alternative media lacked “thickness” in its content, being in want
for richness, quantity and quality.
Tan, who spent 16 years with the Straits Times,
concluded his prognosis with a caution, calling for wariness of the
media’s “omissions in deed and in writing”.