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You know, when we talk about Singaporean culture, we think of the strange two-tier model - the top-heavy Western model and the bottom tier of multi-ethnic cultures continuously and necessarily buttressed by the government. But they are cut off from their parent cultures and they are, just showcase - Chinese, Malay, Indian drama, music, cuisine for the benefit of tourist or National Day.1
The above comment made by Catherine Lim2 in one of her interviews is a testimony of how the widely recognized "best writer in Singapore"3 looks at the culture of her country, a small tropical island which was a former British colony but has now developed into one of Asia's leading countries, noted for its economic prosperity and ascendancy. The analogy of the two-tier model Catherine Lim employs accentuates one of the fundamental issues concerning Singaporean culture and identity - the intricate East/West relationship, which is inscribed at the very core of post-independence Singapore's ongoing project of constructing a unified and distinctive national identity.
Formerly a British colony and then a constituent state of the Federation of Malaysia for two years, Singapore "became"4 an independent republic in 1965, comprising a very ethnically mixed population (78% Chinese, 15% Malays 7% Indians and 2% Eurasian and others). As a small country having to accommodate such a broad ethnic mix, Singapore has to strategically devise an external threat to ameliorate the potential internal tensions and bind its people together. The state believes this could be achieved by re-creating/re-emphasizing the imagined East/West dichotomy, with the East being portrayed as "ordered and harmonious" against the West represented as "decadent and selfish".5 In other words, the nation-building project of Singapore is largely conducted by a carefully cultivated dualistic framework: East versus West. Since the past few decades, the concepts of "East" and "West" have become increasingly ambiguous and the absolute distinction between the two terms has begun to blur. It is becoming unfashionable in many quarters to refer any longer to the binary opposition of "East" and "West". However, it is through re-articulating the Orientalist master-narrative - West versus the East - that Singapore engineers its identity. In the process of building a unique and unified Singaporean identity, Singapore contrives a strong nativist rhetoric which aims at unsettling the...