And we have arrived at the end....

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues that ‘[t]o speak a language is to take on a world, a culture’ (38). In doing so, we lose a sense of our own national identity and culture, and there is a certain fear in there being a lost in the continuation of this culture. We certainly see this conflict embodied between Stephen and Davin: Stephen represents the higher culture of Irish that has been ‘assimilated’ into English culture (in other words, the privileged one. Think LKY and the like) and is an example of the anxieties surrounding a potential loss in identity that Fanon highlights in his article; Davin represents the peasant, the Irish that is fiercely trying to hold on to his Irish identity –‘Whatsoever of thought or of feeling came to him from England or by way of English culture his mind stood armed against in obedience to a password’ (196).

Perhaps we can understand this conflict better by looking at our own Singaporean context. In absorbing the English language as our first language, we have created a common language that helps to unify everyone together, making it possible for people of different races, cultures and backgrounds to communicate with one another. But at the same time, we have lost, or at the risk of losing, the very cultures that our very forefathers had brought along with them when they came to Singapore. One of my Malaysian friends asked me today why is it that in Singapore, we have the option of dual sound for Japanese and Korean dramas but not for Hong Kong dramas or dramas in dialects? My answer was that the government wanted to unify the Chinese together by pushing for Mandarin as the Chinese’ Mother Tongue, and not the dialects. Yet, there still exists a worry that in doing so, we are losing the unique culture that each dialect group brings with them. We are like Stephen and Davin: being easily assimilated into the Western culture to the extent that when I went to England people reacted with surprise that 1. I dress the way they dress. 2. I talk the way they talk. 3. My major is English Literature; at the same time, we are struggling to hold on to our Asian values, to our own traditional cultures and negotiating a Singaporean culture at the same time.

Since this is the last blog post of the week, I’d like to say that at the end of this module, I have looked deeper into my own sense of self and my own notion of a national identity. I question what is it that I have lost by growing up in Singapore, by being introduced to English at an early language and loving (and thus consuming) English and English culture more than say Mandarin and Chinese culture. Looking back, I wished I had put in more effort in Chinese and learnt more about my own culture; at the same time, I also wonder what life would have been like if I had grown up in Malaysia (being a Malaysian at first) as opposed to in Singapore. What language would I be speaking and would I be comfortable with? What culture will I be in? What mask will I be wearing? Perhaps, I should like Stephen, attempt ‘to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race’ just to make sense of things. Just kidding.