Walking, talking, traveling exile : understanding the relevance of exile to Singapore.

• Main Author: Ng, Desmond Wei Kwang.
• Other Authors: Sim Wai Chew
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::Singapore
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/49524
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Edward Said wrote at large about exile from his homeland, and his culture. His name itself presents his dilemma: was he culturally English, or Arab? But out of his experience of exile, Said produced a wealth of knowledge and understanding about culture and identity. This paper will show how and why that exilic experience can be, and should be, applied to Singapore. The application will then focus primarily on Colin Cheong’s Tangerine, a travel novel, to show how the exilic experience has been appropriated in Singaporean works thus far, and what it supposes and suggests for Singapore. The first part of the paper will deal with defining exile by showing what the existing ideas regarding exile are, and how I make sense of the existing views. The second part attempts to apply those understandings of exile and the exilic experience to Singapore--it addresses the relevance of exile to a country that seemingly has no need for exile. The third part of the paper then focuses primarily (but not exclusively) on Colin Cheong’s novel, which is classified under Singaporean travel literature. Why does travel literature matter when we consider an exilic experience? And in turn, how does the experience of exile in our travel literature inform the Singaporean living in his or her homeland? This third part attempts to give some resolution to those questions.