Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

As a foreigner, I am marked as the outside of the nation state. The space of regulated protest at Hong Lim Park has been quarantined, with identity checks. The barricades around the park will ensure that foreigners like me are outside of the designated space. The thinking goes somewhat like this: foreigners like me ought to have no interest in and influence on the social change processes within the nation state. We are here to contribute to the economy as productive migrants, not to have a voice in societal, cultural, and political processes. The barricade as a symbol is also a marker of the outside of the nation. The foreigner is a participant in the economic sphere of the nation and simultaneously excluded from the societal change processes within the nation. As an irony, the very idea of Pink Dot, "freedom to love," challenges the boundaries that are put up by markers of identity. Binaries such as citizen/foreigner are inverted by the invitation to freedom...

Authoritarianism perpetuates its hegemonic power and control through the control over the narrative. Stories make up the bases of the regime's power. The reproduction of the regime is legitimated through the production of specific truth claims that form the narrative bases of the regime's rule. The regime tells stories that are central to its justifications of its repressive strategies. Stories of security threats. Stories of economic opportunity. Stories of transformation brought about through the power and control of the regime. The continuation of the power of the regime is enabled through the manufacturing of these specific narratives that form the bases for the various forms of control enacted by the regime.The consent of the subjects of the regime to its authoritarianism is sought and accomplished through the telling of stories of positive transformations brought about by the regime. The tools of repression are necessary at a violent time of the national hist...