Friday 14 October 2011

馴化

在港大上學,中午時間的太古樓飯堂,難免會碰上一街之隔的英皇書院的學生。


偶然發現前校長梁植穎的《英皇師生愛國愛港情》(香港:明報出版社,2007)。愛國,愛英國,愛中國,愛香港。梁氏介紹超過二百位師生的成就及貢獻。八十載歷史,人材輩出。


關於宋學鵬,目錄上的短短數語,可甚玩味:「教導金文泰港督中文,提高中文老師待遇,馴化金督解決一九二一至一九二六年抵制英貨的中港大罷工。」馴化一字,可圈可點。愛國情操高尚,名副其實。


梁氏引了不許多珍貴材料,包括相片、報章、口述資料等。參考和可讀性甚高。


又,宋氏的藏書今庋藏於加拿大英屬哥倫比亞大學(The University of British Columbia)的亞洲圖書館(Asian Library)。

Saturday 8 October 2011

Singaporean national identities

National identities are politically forged, culturally constructed, and collectively shared. Young country like Singapore provides sound evidence to prove this claim.


Three cultural impulses, Terrence Chong tells us, are relevant to manufacture authenticity in Singapore. They are 1) the Malay literary movement Angkatan Sasterawan 50 prior to independence; 2) the state-sponsored Confucian ethics discourse during the 1980s; and 3) the romanticization of the working-class 'heartlander' through contemporary popular culture in confrontation with the politics of global capitalism and globalization, which Chong argues that offers the most popular symbols of Singaporean national identity.




Terence Chong, "Manufacturing Authenticity: The Cultural Production of National Identities in Singapore," Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2011), pp. 877-897.