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2002-03-27 - 4:36 a.m. Journalist from The New Paper interviews Mdm Rafeah Hamzah (name made-up). Her husband is a drug addict. She complains about the bad company he hangs out with. That he has beaten her before, though she says it is the drugs doing the beating, not him. That he goes in and out of the DRC. That she has a 7 year-old daughter whom she 'cannot afford' to send to school. At the end of the article, a set of statistics that talk about the proportion of drug addicts who are Malay. This is representational politics. Does the Malay/Muslim community step in and protest? Does it demand that journalists stop writing such articles? That it unfairly portrays a community that is largely working-class, burdened by drug problems, trapped in the poverty cycle? (No.) Elangovan, a playwright, interviews Mdm Nargis Banu (name real). Her husband beats her. Husband tries to justify his violence by appealing to his religion, quoting and misinterpreting the hadith. Nargis is suffering intense emotional pressure. This is also representational politics. Does the Indian-Muslim community step in and protest? Does it demand that Elangovan stop staging the play? That it unfairly portrays a community that is stiflingly patriarchal, that condones domestic violence, turns a blind eye to the subjugation of women? (Yes.) These are examples of representational politics. In Singapore, where inter-racial contact has dwindled to its present all-time low, where the rigid CMIO framework insists on placing members of other races at the edge of our peripheral vision, visibility of the (ethnic) Other is mediated through proxies, such as the media, such as the arts. It is important to note that the journalist is as capable of fictionalising, exaggeration and sensationalising as the playwright. If not more. It is important to note that the playwright, abandoned by the very institutions that are supposed to defend his rights and interests (ie, the NAC), is more vulnerable to attack than the journalist who is protected by one of the most monolithic entities in our country, ie, the media. It is important to note that in representational politics, we have to pay attention to not only what is being represented, but also who is the agent of representation--the journalist (=the media)? The playwright (=the individual)? And of course the kind of power this agent holds. Footnote: In the year 2000, a play about a specific case of marital violence in an Indian-Muslim family (this is a re-wording of the gross headlines in the Straits Times: A CONTROVERSIAL PLAY ON MARITAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE AMONG INDIAN MUSLIM WOMEN, WILL BE RESTAGED IN ENGLISH AND MALAY LATER THIS MONTH) was banned by the authorities, apparently under pressure from a fringe (and possibly extremist) ethnic faction. It is my belief that racial politics in Singapore is almost always representational politics, with an oppressive gaze constructed by the majority, imposed on the minority. Witness how over-scrutinised the Malays are with their 'academic under-achievement' and 'drug problems', or the Indians with their 'alcoholism-related domestic troubles'.
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