Sherman Tan
University of Canberra, ANZSOG Institute for Governance, Visiting Research Scholar (Jul 2013 - Sep 2013)
National University of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Visiting Researcher (Jan 2012 - Jun 2012)
Sherman Tan (陈俊豪) | Ph.B. (Hons) (ANU)
Sociology & Linguistics
First Class Honours in Anthropology
Former Researcher | Anthropology
Department of Gender, Media & Cultural Studies (GMCS)
School of Culture, History & Language (CHL)
College of Asia & the Pacific (CAP)
The Australian National University (ANU)
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION
-------------------------------
Sherman Tan previously conducted research in Gender, Media and Cultural Studies, and Anthropology, at the Australian National University (ANU).
He was formerly examining the Sociology and Politics of Love, Romance, Reverie and Realism among Singaporean Youth.
Sherman is interested in youth culture, everyday fantasies and the social aspirations of modernity in Singapore, focusing on familial, romantic and other intimate/sexual relationships. He is interested in mass-mediated, public representations of these relationships in film, theatre and the arts, as well as their evolution in/through various forms of online matching services and mobile dating applications. Overall, this involves an analysis of love, desire and (capitalist/other forms of) enjoyment in Singapore, incorporating perspectives from Psychoanalysis, Semiotics and the "Affective turn" (and beyond) in Philosophy and Cultural Studies.
He graduated from the ANU with a Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) in Sociology and Linguistics, and First Class Honours in Anthropology. Sherman's honours thesis ("Charting the Affective Landscapes of Social Life: Towards a Semiotic-Anthropological Understanding of Affect"), completed in May 2013, examined intersections between linguistic and semiotic anthropology, and affect theory. For more information on the ANU Ph.B. (Hons) program, please visit http://studyat.anu.edu.au.virtual.anu.edu.au/programs/4140HBPHIL;overview.html.
Sherman's other research interests include Linguistic and Semiotic Anthropology, Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis, Visual and Material culture, as well as contemporary Social, Political and Literary Criticism. He has written on Gender/Sexuality, (Neo)Liberalism, Social Movements, Social Theory, Intergenerational Language Attitudes and the politics of language in Singapore. He has also spoken widely on urban and democratic developments in the Singaporean context as well as the limits of political discourse, dialogue and dissent in the country.
Supervisors: Matt Tomlinson and Alan Rumsey
Sociology & Linguistics
First Class Honours in Anthropology
Former Researcher | Anthropology
Department of Gender, Media & Cultural Studies (GMCS)
School of Culture, History & Language (CHL)
College of Asia & the Pacific (CAP)
The Australian National University (ANU)
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION
-------------------------------
Sherman Tan previously conducted research in Gender, Media and Cultural Studies, and Anthropology, at the Australian National University (ANU).
He was formerly examining the Sociology and Politics of Love, Romance, Reverie and Realism among Singaporean Youth.
Sherman is interested in youth culture, everyday fantasies and the social aspirations of modernity in Singapore, focusing on familial, romantic and other intimate/sexual relationships. He is interested in mass-mediated, public representations of these relationships in film, theatre and the arts, as well as their evolution in/through various forms of online matching services and mobile dating applications. Overall, this involves an analysis of love, desire and (capitalist/other forms of) enjoyment in Singapore, incorporating perspectives from Psychoanalysis, Semiotics and the "Affective turn" (and beyond) in Philosophy and Cultural Studies.
He graduated from the ANU with a Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) in Sociology and Linguistics, and First Class Honours in Anthropology. Sherman's honours thesis ("Charting the Affective Landscapes of Social Life: Towards a Semiotic-Anthropological Understanding of Affect"), completed in May 2013, examined intersections between linguistic and semiotic anthropology, and affect theory. For more information on the ANU Ph.B. (Hons) program, please visit http://studyat.anu.edu.au.virtual.anu.edu.au/programs/4140HBPHIL;overview.html.
Sherman's other research interests include Linguistic and Semiotic Anthropology, Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis, Visual and Material culture, as well as contemporary Social, Political and Literary Criticism. He has written on Gender/Sexuality, (Neo)Liberalism, Social Movements, Social Theory, Intergenerational Language Attitudes and the politics of language in Singapore. He has also spoken widely on urban and democratic developments in the Singaporean context as well as the limits of political discourse, dialogue and dissent in the country.
Supervisors: Matt Tomlinson and Alan Rumsey
less
InterestsView All (16)
Uploads
Current Research Projects by Sherman Tan
Preface …… Or, Why Romeo and Juliet Doesn’t Quite Cut It
Introduction
Part I: Context
Chapter 1 …… We Contemporary, “Cool” Singaporeans
Chapter 2 …… The (Chinese) Millennial Complaint
Part II: Courtship
Chapter 3 …… “Coffee” Meets “Bagel”
Chapter 4 …… Courting Consumers
Chapter 5 …… Courting Citizens
Part III: Caution
Chapter 6 …… Carnal Compulsions
Chapter 7 …… Cunning Charades
Chapter 8 …… Uncertain Consequences
Part IV: Connection
Chapter 9 …… Contemplation and (Self-)Control
Chapter 10 …… Comparison and Class-ification
Chapter 11 …… Closeness and Commitment
Conclusion …… Contentment and Compromise?
[ Extended Abstract ] I started on my Ph.D. journey, in 2014, with the intention of writing an ethnography of romantic relationships, dating culture and singlehood in Singapore. My anthropological enterprise, however, has diverged from a straightforward description of gendered, class-stratified or racial distinctions of elective/non-elective, short-term/durable singledom. Instead, for all its specific forms, embodiments and particularities, I argue that the experience and cultural representations of singledom should be employed as a critical heuristic towards understanding postcolonial Singapore and the aporias which mark the advent of hyper-capitalism on the island-state. In particular, singlehood as a social phenomenon highlights the chronic desire - yet, dissatisfaction - at the level of intimate relationships, as symptomatic of impasses and antagonisms that plague the celebratory discourses and practices of neoliberalism, consumerism and technological capitalism in first-world Singapore. I argue that singlehood, and its subsequent and multiple trajectories into marriage, coupledom and family (however these may be defined), is inevitably afflicted with what Lauren Berlant (2011) calls “cruel optimism”, and must contend with what Mari Ruti (2009) describes in psychoanalytic terms as “the fall of fantasies” amidst “a world of fragile things”. In other words, the promises of happiness and fulfilment that attach to couplehood and family life may be found wanting - or at the least, fraying - even as these intimate relationships are paradoxically idealised by the state, community and individuals, yet experienced at some point as dissatisfying or insufficient, amidst a lifeworld of other persistent desires.
Taking as my starting point, and focusing on the embodied experiences of singles in Singapore, as well as cultural and mediated representations of singledom in theatre, film, television and cyberspace, I attempt to conceptually distill and describe the permanence of “singleness" at an interpersonal and social-relational level, differentiating this categorically from singlehood/singledom as lived experience or symbolic presentation. “Singleness", as a marker of Singaporean contemporaneity, is defined as the persistent void/otherness and irretrievable loss of authenticity which eludes each attempt at identification and self-identity. As such, “singleness" may be genealogically traced from the inauguration of an independent, postcolonial Singapore - uniquely divorced from any sense of historical indignity or singular cultural tradition/origin - and further sustained through, and in spite of, the compulsive (and repetitive) labour of state-making alongside projects of social construction and self-determination. Concurrently, encounters with “singleness" are ever more pronounced against what I describe as the advent of "postmodern culture" in Singapore - a transitory and unstable social formation, involving intellectual, artistic, public and individual ambitions to move beyond various forms of patriarchy and authority, to ultimately post-oedipal and post-ideological cultural configurations. “Singleness", in itself, as irreducible void/otherness, however, may neither be approached directly nor observed empirically, only inferred from all necessarily futile attempts to eradicate this lacuna or furnish it with positive and progressive meaning. Not limited to its manifestation in singlehood, “singleness" - as a palpable sense of nullity and absence - traverses various spaces and scales of political, cultural and social being in Singapore. It motivates desires for (re)productivity in the time of neoliberal personhood, while producing abjections (avoidances/dismissals) of personal, communal and national confrontations with existential precarity, (ir)relevance and (in)significance, amidst a constantly changing global climate of migration, labour and capital flows.
Ultimately, singlehood/singledom (as embodied experience or cultural-symbolic representation) is a fertile site of enquiry for the presence and definition of “singleness” in the Singaporean context. During my year-and-a-half-long fieldwork in the country, singles - of different class, gender and religious orientations, and across various ages - bore attitudes towards their singledom as personally liberating or limiting, or were simply ambivalent towards their experience of singlehood. However - and regardless of their existence as happy, bitter or indifferent singles - the material and existential conditions of singledom afforded these individuals a space of heightened recognition, reflection, (re)assessment of their participation in meaningful life projects, whether this entailed the persistent search for intimate partnership and the desire for marriage and family, and/or involved having sufficient time to pursue activities such as activism, philanthropy, and the enjoyment of a new hobby, or material fulfillment within the pleasure-circuits of urban consumerism. The horizon of “singleness”, as described above, appears in the experience of singlehood as the relentless personal pursuit of symbolic goals and simulacra (Baudrillard, 1981) in the time of late- or hyper-capitalism, accompanied by an equally fastidious repudiation of lethargy and fatalism in singledom and their damaging effects. These (temporal and sometimes temporary) pursuits and desires take on both embodied emotional and material forms of labour, but more importantly, single individuals stress the enduring need for personal productivity in these spaces, citing narratives of precarious, banal and meaningless living which should be avoided at all costs. At the same time, “singleness” permeates the lives of single individuals (and arguably, couples too) through the state ideology and cultural impetus, more than anything, to substitute these forms of personal productivity for possible biological reproductivity in the familial domain. In short, the clearest encounter with “singleness” in singlehood may be traced in the double-movement of desiring and searching for productive activity (and desire itself), and the concomitant abjection of insignificant and purposeless lives. However, “singleness” stubbornly persists even when singlehood ends, both in the duration or aftermath of singledom, underlined by narratives of dissatisfaction and restlessness in coupledom and family life, and encapsulated by the ineradicable social demand that one’s commitment to intimate relationships and families must contend with other capitalist desires in a Singaporean cultural lifeworld which stresses material enjoyment and pleasurable self-improvement.
Published Articles by Sherman Tan
Invited Presentations by Sherman Tan
Conferences and Talks by Sherman Tan
[FULL ABSTRACT] Contemporary Singaporean living takes place at the intersection of multiple forces, namely, political transitions from the developmental state to neoliberal governance, the rapid rise of an urban landscape pervaded by market capitalism and widespread consumerism, together with the ruling elite’s sustained emphasis on developing a unique yet hybrid postcolonial identity for its citizenry, drawing on their multicultural and multireligious “Asian” modernity and traditions. While there has been much academic interest concerning these state-sanctioned modernising trajectories, little has been written about the intimate spaces and affective tenor of everyday relationships. From portrayals of love, desire and sexuality in recent Singapore cinema and television soap operas, to observations from my initial fieldwork of six months, I focus on the lived experience of romantic relationships as a site of intergenerational reproduction, socialised habit, cultural innovation, as well as intensified attachments to material objects and fantasies. I argue that these relationships are marked by tensions between the (neo)liberal and orderly social aesthetics of “balanced” lifestyles, self-moderation and self-regulation, on the one hand, and structures of feeling involving the transgressive or sacrificial extremities of romantic (or other forms of) desire, on the other. These aporias have also blurred the boundaries between private, everyday struggles of individuals and couples, and intimate publics (Berlant, 2008) that offer recognition, validation, and ultimately, reassurance for Singaporeans experiencing these contradictory pressures. Finally, I trace the political implications of these intimately lived tensions, palpable in the state’s present difficulty in securing affective loyalties from its citizen-subjects.
Preface …… Or, Why Romeo and Juliet Doesn’t Quite Cut It
Introduction
Part I: Context
Chapter 1 …… We Contemporary, “Cool” Singaporeans
Chapter 2 …… The (Chinese) Millennial Complaint
Part II: Courtship
Chapter 3 …… “Coffee” Meets “Bagel”
Chapter 4 …… Courting Consumers
Chapter 5 …… Courting Citizens
Part III: Caution
Chapter 6 …… Carnal Compulsions
Chapter 7 …… Cunning Charades
Chapter 8 …… Uncertain Consequences
Part IV: Connection
Chapter 9 …… Contemplation and (Self-)Control
Chapter 10 …… Comparison and Class-ification
Chapter 11 …… Closeness and Commitment
Conclusion …… Contentment and Compromise?
[ Extended Abstract ] I started on my Ph.D. journey, in 2014, with the intention of writing an ethnography of romantic relationships, dating culture and singlehood in Singapore. My anthropological enterprise, however, has diverged from a straightforward description of gendered, class-stratified or racial distinctions of elective/non-elective, short-term/durable singledom. Instead, for all its specific forms, embodiments and particularities, I argue that the experience and cultural representations of singledom should be employed as a critical heuristic towards understanding postcolonial Singapore and the aporias which mark the advent of hyper-capitalism on the island-state. In particular, singlehood as a social phenomenon highlights the chronic desire - yet, dissatisfaction - at the level of intimate relationships, as symptomatic of impasses and antagonisms that plague the celebratory discourses and practices of neoliberalism, consumerism and technological capitalism in first-world Singapore. I argue that singlehood, and its subsequent and multiple trajectories into marriage, coupledom and family (however these may be defined), is inevitably afflicted with what Lauren Berlant (2011) calls “cruel optimism”, and must contend with what Mari Ruti (2009) describes in psychoanalytic terms as “the fall of fantasies” amidst “a world of fragile things”. In other words, the promises of happiness and fulfilment that attach to couplehood and family life may be found wanting - or at the least, fraying - even as these intimate relationships are paradoxically idealised by the state, community and individuals, yet experienced at some point as dissatisfying or insufficient, amidst a lifeworld of other persistent desires.
Taking as my starting point, and focusing on the embodied experiences of singles in Singapore, as well as cultural and mediated representations of singledom in theatre, film, television and cyberspace, I attempt to conceptually distill and describe the permanence of “singleness" at an interpersonal and social-relational level, differentiating this categorically from singlehood/singledom as lived experience or symbolic presentation. “Singleness", as a marker of Singaporean contemporaneity, is defined as the persistent void/otherness and irretrievable loss of authenticity which eludes each attempt at identification and self-identity. As such, “singleness" may be genealogically traced from the inauguration of an independent, postcolonial Singapore - uniquely divorced from any sense of historical indignity or singular cultural tradition/origin - and further sustained through, and in spite of, the compulsive (and repetitive) labour of state-making alongside projects of social construction and self-determination. Concurrently, encounters with “singleness" are ever more pronounced against what I describe as the advent of "postmodern culture" in Singapore - a transitory and unstable social formation, involving intellectual, artistic, public and individual ambitions to move beyond various forms of patriarchy and authority, to ultimately post-oedipal and post-ideological cultural configurations. “Singleness", in itself, as irreducible void/otherness, however, may neither be approached directly nor observed empirically, only inferred from all necessarily futile attempts to eradicate this lacuna or furnish it with positive and progressive meaning. Not limited to its manifestation in singlehood, “singleness" - as a palpable sense of nullity and absence - traverses various spaces and scales of political, cultural and social being in Singapore. It motivates desires for (re)productivity in the time of neoliberal personhood, while producing abjections (avoidances/dismissals) of personal, communal and national confrontations with existential precarity, (ir)relevance and (in)significance, amidst a constantly changing global climate of migration, labour and capital flows.
Ultimately, singlehood/singledom (as embodied experience or cultural-symbolic representation) is a fertile site of enquiry for the presence and definition of “singleness” in the Singaporean context. During my year-and-a-half-long fieldwork in the country, singles - of different class, gender and religious orientations, and across various ages - bore attitudes towards their singledom as personally liberating or limiting, or were simply ambivalent towards their experience of singlehood. However - and regardless of their existence as happy, bitter or indifferent singles - the material and existential conditions of singledom afforded these individuals a space of heightened recognition, reflection, (re)assessment of their participation in meaningful life projects, whether this entailed the persistent search for intimate partnership and the desire for marriage and family, and/or involved having sufficient time to pursue activities such as activism, philanthropy, and the enjoyment of a new hobby, or material fulfillment within the pleasure-circuits of urban consumerism. The horizon of “singleness”, as described above, appears in the experience of singlehood as the relentless personal pursuit of symbolic goals and simulacra (Baudrillard, 1981) in the time of late- or hyper-capitalism, accompanied by an equally fastidious repudiation of lethargy and fatalism in singledom and their damaging effects. These (temporal and sometimes temporary) pursuits and desires take on both embodied emotional and material forms of labour, but more importantly, single individuals stress the enduring need for personal productivity in these spaces, citing narratives of precarious, banal and meaningless living which should be avoided at all costs. At the same time, “singleness” permeates the lives of single individuals (and arguably, couples too) through the state ideology and cultural impetus, more than anything, to substitute these forms of personal productivity for possible biological reproductivity in the familial domain. In short, the clearest encounter with “singleness” in singlehood may be traced in the double-movement of desiring and searching for productive activity (and desire itself), and the concomitant abjection of insignificant and purposeless lives. However, “singleness” stubbornly persists even when singlehood ends, both in the duration or aftermath of singledom, underlined by narratives of dissatisfaction and restlessness in coupledom and family life, and encapsulated by the ineradicable social demand that one’s commitment to intimate relationships and families must contend with other capitalist desires in a Singaporean cultural lifeworld which stresses material enjoyment and pleasurable self-improvement.
[FULL ABSTRACT] Contemporary Singaporean living takes place at the intersection of multiple forces, namely, political transitions from the developmental state to neoliberal governance, the rapid rise of an urban landscape pervaded by market capitalism and widespread consumerism, together with the ruling elite’s sustained emphasis on developing a unique yet hybrid postcolonial identity for its citizenry, drawing on their multicultural and multireligious “Asian” modernity and traditions. While there has been much academic interest concerning these state-sanctioned modernising trajectories, little has been written about the intimate spaces and affective tenor of everyday relationships. From portrayals of love, desire and sexuality in recent Singapore cinema and television soap operas, to observations from my initial fieldwork of six months, I focus on the lived experience of romantic relationships as a site of intergenerational reproduction, socialised habit, cultural innovation, as well as intensified attachments to material objects and fantasies. I argue that these relationships are marked by tensions between the (neo)liberal and orderly social aesthetics of “balanced” lifestyles, self-moderation and self-regulation, on the one hand, and structures of feeling involving the transgressive or sacrificial extremities of romantic (or other forms of) desire, on the other. These aporias have also blurred the boundaries between private, everyday struggles of individuals and couples, and intimate publics (Berlant, 2008) that offer recognition, validation, and ultimately, reassurance for Singaporeans experiencing these contradictory pressures. Finally, I trace the political implications of these intimately lived tensions, palpable in the state’s present difficulty in securing affective loyalties from its citizen-subjects.
We propose to examine the rise of hipster culture within Tiong Bahru as a focal point of cross-cultural influences. There are two aspects to our ethnographic inquiry. Firstly, we investigate the socio-economic and material conditions within Tiong Bahru that made it a conducive site for hipster culture to germinate. By actively seeking out and emulating what is perceived as counter-cultural, hipster culture brings about a juxtaposition of new, foreign elements against a highly traditionalised backdrop. It opens up an opportunity for dialogue between the foreign and the local. Moreover, it constitutes a metacommentary on cultural differences in Singaporean society, translating into a specific social literacy employed in subjects’ encounters with conditions of diversity.
Secondly, we delve into the contradictions inherent within a hipster culture that manufactures ‘hyperauthentic’ experiences, and the tensions this potentially creates when pit against the backdrop of an ‘authentic’ local community. This will be explored through a series of interviews with local residents, foreign residents, foreign visitors, as well as shop owners. We will use these interviews to explore their experience of hipster spaces within Tiong Bahru, with a specific focus on how the rise of these hipster spaces have influenced the dynamics of local communities, traditions, and practices.
This paper examines online discourses taken from Singaporean citizens’ comments in web-blogs and discussion forums concerning the value/relevance of these stigmatized dialects. Interestingly, these online “discourses of resistance”, which seek to re-value these linguistic codes, trade on the same language ideologies that are sustained through the official discourses aimed at their de-valuation. Both these discourses tend to view language as an alienable commodity and as a reified object, as something that can be actively manipulated, controlled and which possesses a specific value. Both discourses also involve the construal of linguistic difference through the semiotic processes of iconization, recursivity and erasure (Irvine & Gal, 2000). Overall, this paper suggests that although these discourses may differ in content, they presuppose a common ground of language ideology and its related processes, confirming the view that “movements to save minority languages are often structured around the same received notions of language that have led to their oppression and/or suppression” (Woolard, 1998). Indeed, these shared language ideologies might be important for various agencies and actors, especially in their bid to enlist language for the purposes of sociopolitical action."