I had always known about colonialism, in the tangible, post-colonial sense of being born in Singapore post-Independence from British colonial rule, and having been educated in schools named after the “founder of modern Singapore” (where our houses take the names of various British principals). I never thought much about it beyond a historical fact, perhaps an interesting trivia to flourish in the early years of coming to the UK for my undergraduate studies (since Singapore paled in colonial comparison to India and Jamaica). Recently, as I engage more with issues of (in)justice, power dynamics, knowledge production, and identity/positionality, I began to pay more attention to colonial history, to my own knowledge and learnings and where they originate, to my identity as a descendent of Teochew Chinese settlers in Singapore, ensconced within the Malay Archipelago.
The Fringe Festival (and International Festival and Book Festival which apparently pre-dated the Fringe but have since been outshined) in Edinburgh has just ended. I’m not much of an arts/cultural person, finding theatre sometimes too abstract for me to understand/interpret or too dramatic and overbearing for my mild personality. But the Fringe being supposedly one of the largest performing arts festivals in the world, and this being possibly the only time in my life that I would be living in Edinburgh while the Fringe was going on, it would be remiss to not attend any of the events. So I went for 17 shows, musical theatre, physical theatre, and comedies, mostly by performers of colour, sharing their stories and heritage from USA and Brazil to India and Pakistan to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore, of being diaspora, of stereotypes, of privilege. Of being from the majority world, making our way and living in the world made by Euro-American dominance.
Perhaps now, with an impending move to Spain, I’m reflecting more on British colonialism and its impact on my life. English is my first language after all, and though I was filled with apprehension regarding the pronunciation of English words when I first came to the UK, at least I always knew I’d be able to understand all the signs and notices, be able to converse and go through administrative procedures, and get what I needed done. It is slightly daunting, the thought of having to navigate Spanish bureaucracy in Spanish, of having to pick up (some) Catalan to integrate better into Barcelona, of becoming fluent enough in Spanish to at least be able to read the signs. Of course, one doesn’t absolutely have to; in this day and age, in a city like Barcelona, you can get by in English. But I like being able to learn about the places I am in, and culture and customs are tightly linked to language that to not make an effort to learn the language would seem a half-baked effort.
Yet I also like being able to express my identity and culture in all of its multi-faceted ways. Of not forgetting that my Mother Tongue should be Teochew, and not Mandarin, but also not losing my ability to speak/read/write/understand Mandarin Chinese, of the familiarity and comfort derived from hearing Singaporean accents and Singlish, of the desire for Malay food which somehow still isn’t more widely available. If being in the UK is once-removed from all of this, the UK being the imperial metropole that unites these disparate elements, then being in Spain would make me twice-removed, since Spanish colonial influence is minimal in Singapore, to my knowledge.
Perhaps though, being on the European continent, it would be a good time to learn more about wider European colonial history, about the Spaniards in the Philippines and the Dutch in Indonesia. In trying to learn more about other non-Western knowledges and schools of thought and academic traditions, I tried to read this article/interview transcript about the School of Autonomous Knowledge, founded by Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas. I found it quite difficult to follow/understand, perhaps because I’m not a sociologist or social scientist by training, but was intrigued to learn about Raden Ajeng Kartini, a Javanese woman considered to be one of Indonesia’s earliest feminist and who lived during Dutch colonial rule. Interestingly, the Dutch appeared to disdain their colonial subjects who spoke Dutch, preferring instead to talk to them in Malay and have them respond in Javanese/Malay. Whereas the British, and I suppose the Spanish as well, have certainly made the their colonial ruling elites, if not the general population, learn their language.
Coming back to my present, apart from my lurking fear that I will both be an imposter in my new job and fail to master the colonial Castellano/Castilian language, it would be so interesting to learn not just the ways of living in Barcelona but also the different manners in which coloniality might manifest itself in this part of Europe. Yet even as I close my bank account in the UK, in so many ways, both historical structural and personal, I’ll always be linked to this country that will never feel like home but always be familiar to me.
Jocelyne Shimin Sze 