The Margins Review · Culture-Centered Approach

On Saturday, I headed to an election rally by the Singapore Democratic Party with my partner. It was lively and several of the candidates spoke well. Their speeches were studded with memorable anecdotes, what I always refer to as "nuggets" to my students. When it ended, we thought well, what a lovely evening, and we headed to dinner at a coffee shop nearby. The shop was packed with elderly men, mostly drinking beer and talking politics. Those who were not talking were transfixed by the TV, where the late night news was playing in Mandarin. We too watched the news as we ate, which was all about the various rallies taking place all over the island before the election on September 11. But at one juncture, I noticed a wiry, elderly man swaggering and dancing his way to the front of the TV screen. He clapped his hands and started dancing with his hands outstretched as he watched a candidate of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) delive...

In the reading "Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research", Dwight Conquerwood cited Raymond Williams who talks about class-based arrogance of scriptocentrism, pointing to the error and delusion of highly-educated people who are so driven in on their reading (sic) that they fail to notice that there are other forms of skilled, intelligent, creative activity, such as theatre and active politics. This error resembles that of the narrow reformer who supposes that farm labourers and village craftsmen were once uneducated, merely because they could not read. He argued that the contempt for performance and practical activity, which is always latent in the highly-literate, is a mark of the observer's limits, not those of the activities themselves. I was at once moved and excited reading this as this has always been a lingering thread in my mind. Over the last two decades, I have had many encounters, deep and extended, with farmers, labourers and villagers - or...

1991 or 1992, one of those years, an impressionable time in my life, when I was being exposed to many different worldviews through introduction to new books.  Many of these books became windows into learning about the world, brought through new friendships in college. One of these books, "Atlas Shrugged" made a big impact on me as it challenged many of my earlier held beliefs and values about commitment, service, and lending your voice in solidarity with the struggles of the poor. I remember, the most exciting part of reading Ayn Rand was the exhilarating sense of freedom at the recognition that caring for others is a hypocrisy, that the best I could do was to pursue my own dreams and unleash my own capabilities. The narrative worked well because it fit nicely with my aspirations for upward mobility. Ayn Rand told me that caring for others or commitment to community are hypocrisies. The best way to contribute to society was to care for my own self and for my own...

If academe is narrowly conceived as a training ground for elitist citizens who are disconnected and far-removed from the plight of everyday people, it fails to serve as a learning ground. Unfortunately, elitism has become the hallmark of many Asian Universities, following the trend toward elitism that we see globally. Asian universities wanting to become the next Ivy league are more interested in developing strategies that would take them to the Ivy league position than about serving the people and communities they reside in. They fly in White Professors from these Ivy leagues to teach, mentor and model the art of becoming elitist. One of the byproducts of this elitism is the inability of the social sciences to serve any real purpose in understanding the local societies within which Universities are located. Students are not trained to be out in the community talking to people. The classroom becomes the site for learning Eurocentric models and Eurocentric theories, and Profess...

After a CARE meeting today, CARE researchers brought our guests, domestic workers from the shelter, for lunch at the staff lounge. Upon entering, we were greeted by a very rude and condescending Associate Professor from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (NUS). He felt the need to remind us that this space was "for faculty only", clearly not a place for mere researchers like us and the domestic workers, despite us having access to the lounge with our staff cards (as fulltime research assistants). It is so disturbing how such arrogant and classist academics reside in the institutions of power, draw power from their positions, and set the standards for what Professorship looks like in our prestigious university. This brings up issues of the kinds of indicators we use to measure the quality of scholars, and who is deemed fit to mentor and teach our students. What values do we impart in our students when our Profes...