'Pornography Disguised as Art': Bare/d Bodies, Biopolitics, and Multicultural Tolerance in Singapore

CHAPTER 3 ‘Pornography Disguised as Art’: Bare/d Bodies, Biopolitics and Multicultural Tolerance in Singapore Marcus Cheng Chye Tan PornograPhy DisguiseD as art Based on the theme of ‘Art and Skin,’ the 2017 M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, an annual performing arts festival that showcases local and international socially engaged avant-garde work, examined the ‘skin’ as a site of intimacy, sensuality, vulnerability, appearance and imprisonment. Of the ten performances, two were subsequently prohibited performance licences by the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA), a government statutory board that regulates restrictions, manages censorship and awards ‘Licence for the Provision of Arts Entertainment.’ The IMDA claimed some performances had exceeded the ‘R18’ rating under the Arts Entertainment Classification Code for they featured ‘excessive nudity which included scenes of audience-participants stripping naked, and graphic depictions of exposed genitalia.’1 Two performances in par- M. C. C. Tan (*) National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: marcus.tan@nie.edu.sg © The Author(s) 2020 M. C. C. Tan, C. Rajendran (eds.), Performing Southeast Asia, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34686-7_3 61 62 M. C. C. TAN ticular were identified—Berlin-based Singaporean Ming Poon’s Undressing Room and Canadian Thea Fitz-James’s Naked Ladies. Despite powerful socio-political messages underlying the use of nudity, both shows were given a ‘non-rating’ classification that made them ineligible for performance licences; both shows needed to have been reworked and resubmitted for classification before they could be featured. Undressing Room and Naked Ladies were consequently cancelled by festival organisers in accordance with the artists’ decisions to withdraw from the festival. While there have been performances in Singapore, both film and theatre, that have contained degrees of nudity, and notwithstanding the gradual liberalising of permissible content in Singapore’s arts and public entertainment scenes, such authoritarian acts of censorship are not surprising given the country’s history of surveillance and suppression of radical film and theatre. Still, the cancellation of Undressing Room and Naked Ladies alarmed many in the local arts community particularly since the circumstances that led to IMDA’s decision were uncannily coincidental with an online petition to prohibit these performances. On 22 November 2016, an anonymously composed Facebook group, ‘Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family’ (SDMF hereafter) posted an entry ‘M1 Fringe Festival—Pornography Disguised as Art?’ With right-wing righteousness, the post attacked the M1 Fringe Festival for ‘prostituting the performing arts sector’2 and ‘promot[ing] homosexual behaviour and transgenderism.’3 The authors, priding themselves as pro-family Singaporeans who were saving Singapore from an ‘immoral mess’ while combatting left-wing Western liberalisms, urged the government to exercise ‘due diligence in vetting such shows.’4 The anonymously composed virtual exhortation roused the attention of Singapore’s arts community and eventually led to a divisive debate on the role of nudity in performance and the function of art in society. The impassioned discussion spilled beyond Facebook’s digital walls as it permeated blogs and mainstream media. Just three days after the post’s mandate to the government to stop this promotion of ‘sex and LGBT activism’5 and attack on traditional Asian values of morality and family, the IMDA released an official statement to deny classification ratings for Undressing Room and Naked Ladies. Ironically, while SDMF reflected fears that pornography (disguised) as art will result in a ‘significant rift’6 in conservative Singapore, the divisive event exemplifies a widening fissure in the multicultural fabric of Singapore society and underscores a rising sectarianism amongst the populace: those who have imbibed the politicised values of heteronormativity, Asian con- 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 63 servatism and nuclearised kinship strongly advocated by the state versus the minority Other(s) on the fringes. And while the refusal of permissions and cancellation of these two shows cannot be the affirmative consequence of SDMF’s virtual lobbying, the sequence of events, as Goh Wei Hao observes, is ‘at least a little uncanny.’7 It reveals how contemporary events in the West, such as the rise of Donald Trump and the alt-right, continue to reify Singapore’s regard of the West as the dissolute Other, even as it uninhibitedly welcomes Western corporations, concepts and monies. Interestingly, however, such an ideological rhetoric of ‘Asian values’8 is today less employed by the state but by a section of its population determined to assume the responsibility for continued regulation of bodies and the body politic. Given this curious evolution of biopolitics in Singapore in which biopower is now exercised by the people on the people, this chapter will examine the (bare/d) body as a site of political inscription and the exercise of biopower. Biopolitics, as Foucault posits, is ‘the control over relations between the human race, or human beings insofar as they are a species, insofar as they are living beings, and their environment, the milieu in which they live.’9 It is consequently characterised by an erasure of the individual body and the state’s ‘acquisition of power over man insofar as man is a living being, that the biological came under State control, that there was at least a certain tendency that leads to what might be termed State control of the biological.’10 Biopower is, consequently, the ‘numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations’11; it is ‘a power that has taken control of both the body and life or that is […] taken control of life in general.’12 The chapter then considers the politicisation of the body in performance, in the biopolitical context of contemporary Singapore where the naked body is (still) regarded as (homo)sexual and/or morally decadent. As events of the M1 Fringe Festival controversy reveal, bodies that challenge normative (Asian) values—of sexuality, gender, matrimony—must be punished or purged, and biopower is exercised to contain deviance and safeguard normativity. In relation to the changing socio-political dynamics in contemporary Singapore, this chapter is also concerned about the ways in which the biopoliticised body is produced as a consequence of the state’s narrow conception of multiculturalism, effected as ideological apparatus. While much has been critiqued about Singapore’s celebrated brand of multicultural practice predicated on the strict regulation of ethnic bodies, the question of cultural Otherness, 64 M. C. C. TAN understood not as racial, ethnic or religious but as marginal cultures—of sexuality, gender and art—has been less examined. BioPower, Bare/D BoDy, Bureaucratic BoDy Body art has always placed the body as a ‘site of social inscription.’13 Nudity, in its performative exposition, aims to peel off ‘the sedimented layers of signification with which the body […] was historically and culturally coded.’14 The bare/d body is thus used as a site of a phenomenological encounter that interrogates discursive inscriptions of power, privilege, divergence and difference. Akin to, though certainly not identical with, Giorgio Agamben’s depiction of the homo sacer, the bare/d body stands in contrast to sovereign power in its political nakedness and its necessary inclusive exclusion from political representation and action (1998). Unlike the homo sacer of archaic Roman law in the state of exception, however, this exclusion is an agency exercised by the subject. Yet, similar to the homo sacer, the bare/d body remains subject to sovereign power exercised through censorship and punishment. It is the body that reveals the space between the political and the natural. The bare/d body as the organic medium used to confront this space between remains the focus of Ming’s Undressing Room and Fitz-James’s Naked Ladies. In her solo performance, Fitz-James investigates the construction of female identities as ‘inter-courses’ of the social and personal. Employing critical humour and reflexivity, she explores the politics of female nudity, body art and masturbation, using her own body as narrative and mode of narrativisation. The audience is invited to then exercise the gendered (and erotic) gaze and in so doing deconstruct dictates of the feminine body and its biopolitical (en)gendering through an autoreflexive self-questioning.15 Similarly, Undressing Room explores the bare/d body as a ‘disruptive mode of textuality’16 that compels the spectator-participant to read the body alternatively and reconsider the sexualisation of the naked body. Roles and boundaries are obscured for, in this unique one-to-one performance, actor and spectator undress each other in a meditative encounter with ‘the thing itself’17—‘unaccommodated man.’18 In a silent ritual, participants and performer remove each other’s clothing and observe each other’s nudity. The phenomenological body becomes the site of interrogation and connection—‘it is about what being naked does to us and how it makes us feel and behave.’19 The act of disrobing becomes an act of symbolic resistance to the dictates of biopower and can be read 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 65 as the stripping of conformist identities inscribed by state apparatuses. The personal, intimate and singular body stands opposed to the biopolitical body that, in the case of Singapore, is a ‘bureaucratic body.’ Ming describes this body in the following way: The psyche of the bureaucratic body centres around efficiency and effectiveness. It is result-oriented. It does not matter how it gets things done, its goal is simply to get them done and pass them along down or up the line. The bureaucratic body is hierarchical. It is vital that a bureaucratic body knows its place on that hierarchy. [The] [b]ureaucratic body cannot exist as an individual entity; it is always a part of a longer chain of other bureaucratic bodies. It cannot and does not make any autonomous decisions; rather it requires instructions from higher authority. The actions and movements of the bureaucratic body is therefore reactive, rather than pro-active […] Because of that, most bureaucratic bodies end up looking identical and amicable, without any distinguishable characteristic […] The bureaucratic body thrives on orderliness […] [It] attempts to erase all traces of flesh, blood, bone, fluid, nerves and tendons from itself. Instead, it constructs its body out of rules, regulations, instructions, procedures and statistics. It does not interest itself with the quest for knowledge or truth (as they can be messy); rather it prefers to collect facts and numbers. The skin of this body, its outermost confine, is used to keep all these facts and numbers in their places. It acts as the gatekeeper, separating messiness from orderliness and sorting out knowledge from facts. Physical touch is treated with great suspicion as it can upset the clear delineation and cause contamination to seep in. This can threaten its order of things.20 IMDA’s decision of non-classification and the furore stirred by SDMF underscore the reverence for the bureaucratic body and exemplify the biopolitics of the state: conformity is necessary, for difference and deviance engender multiplicity and diversity that a bureaucratic body cannot comprehend. The bureaucratic body is a faceless collective as are the IMDA and SDMF; it is reactive in how it swiftly issued its prohibitive decision on the performances; it must be clothed for nakedness is expositional, transgressive and perverse. In Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault affirms how ‘sexuality exists at the point where body and population meet. And so it is a matter for discipline, and also a matter for regularisation.’21 In Singapore, this regularisation of the body and sexuality is most evident in the continued 66 M. C. C. TAN criminalisation of sex between mutually consenting adult men, enshrined in Section 377A of the Penal Code. Despite the many attempts at repealing this colonial statute, the state has retained it on the justification that Singapore remains, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong states, a largely conservative society that ‘values the conventional family unit’22—‘one man, one woman, marrying, having children and bringing up children within that framework of a stable unit.’23 This distinct exercise of biopower is further evidenced in the persistence of laws against oral and anal sex between heterosexual couples (only legalised in 2007), the prohibition of any retention, distribution or sale of pornographic materials, and nudity in a public space or private space exposed to public view. While 377A is not actively enforced and the purposeful policing of individuals for these transgressions is not advanced, biopower in Singapore is exercised through entrenched ideological state apparatus predicated on Asian conservatism or ‘Asian values’ as a discursive truth that must be embraced by all of society. In its post, SDMF cites unreservedly Singapore’s late President Wee Kim Wee’s 1989 parliamentary speech that advocated the need for preserving ‘Asianness’ as the predominating characteristic of Singapore society: Traditional Asian ideas of morality, duty, and society which have sustained and guided us in the past are giving way to a more Westernised, individualistic and self-centred outlook on life [, and] we should preserve the cultural heritage of each of our communities, and uphold certain common values which capture the essence of being a Singaporean. These core values include placing society above self, upholding the family as the basic building block of society.24 In this extract, simplistically appropriated by SDMF, issues of sexuality, culture, heritage and morality are conflated: traditional Asian values equate with duty, community and the family. Conversely implied, the contemporary is liberal, immoral, individualistic and West(ern). This concept of ‘Asian values’ can largely be attributed to Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, who in the 1990s demarcated the West from Asia as a means of justifying the disbelief in the hegemonic precepts of universal human rights. Underlying a cultural relativist and anti-liberal (and Western) conception of society and politics, Lee regards Singapore as an archetype of Asia that is fundamentally different, for hierarchy, interdependence and the social position of citizens underpin the success of a 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 67 society, a ‘web-like relational or communitarian view of society where everyone knows his or her place in a social hierarchy.’25 The heteronormative family is thus given significant consideration in Lee’s definition for the state is regarded as an ‘extended family’ headed by a strong patriarch. The family provides the ‘prime conceptual basis of a relational view of society, [and] because it is a natural and self-sustaining mechanism for providing nurture, socialisation and social services to the population.’26 As Lee once argued, ‘Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family. He is not pristine and separate. The family is part of the extended family, and then friends and wider society.’27 The family as the foundation for thinking of society as an organic unity then provides the strongest rationale for a state-conceived communitarianism. This mise-en-abyme, this infinite reification, of the private and public family is reflected, ironically, in how such avowals continue to be advocated by Lee’s son, who is the current Prime Minister. Most recently in 2016, Lee, exploiting the Chinese New Year celebrations, reminded all Singaporeans of the importance of the family and how it is ‘an important building block of society […] the model of how we should relate to one another as fellow citizens, seeing one another as members of an extended Singapore family.’28 Lee here was also referring to a new video posted on the government’s official Facebook page, Gov.sg, which features a nostalgic idealisation of an aged heterosexual couple and their understanding of love and the family. While such reiterations about the family and Singapore society have become trite, the younger Lee’s emphasis that the video ‘encapsulated what family really means’29 distinctly demarcates the heterosexual family as normative, and effectively discriminates social structures that do not conform. Even as Lee claims that the government is merely accommodating to a large conservative segment of Singapore society in retaining 377A of the Penal Code and the phrase ‘Asian values’ is no longer used in public rhetoric, such assertions of the heteronormative family reveal how ‘Asian values’ continue to be exploited as biopower in the state’s (bio)political stratagem. Deviations from the imagined ‘Singapore’ family must be normalised or be marginalised, even penalised. In Singapore, ‘Asian’ conservatism and communitarianism characterise the biopolitical; these forms of biopower subjugate and regulate the interior Other through discipline and punishment, with the objective of shaping the Other to be the Same. Undressing Room is deprecated as ‘an obscene act’30 only because it explores the naked body. And because the bare/d body is an individual Other in its phenomenological encounter, it must be communi- 68 M. C. C. TAN tarianised and normalised. The bare/d body is a deviant Other as it is pornographic, abnormal, (homo)sexual and anti-social and so must be disciplined. Through such an ascription of the singular Other (body) as a threat, can the state legitimise its subjugation and collectivisation of Otherness? In Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault postulates that ‘the norm is something that can be applied to both a body one wishes to discipline and a population one wishes to regularise […] The normalising society is a society in which the norm of discipline and the norm of regulation intersect along an orthogonal articulation.’31 Such an intersection is found in the body of the heterosexual couple and the nuclear family. SDMF, with its 1057 followers, appropriates as its profile picture an image of Singapore’s former Supreme Court, overlaid with a portrait of the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew along with his late wife Kwa Geok Choo. At top left, there is another superimposed image of the ideal Singapore nuclear family, one advocated by Lee as the ‘Stop at Two’ policy—a population control measure introduced between 1972 and 1986.32 Accompanying this conflated symbol of the constitutional and the domestic is a quote that reads ‘Honour and emulate our beloved founding father’s life, love and devotion to his wife, family and nation.’33 As a composition, empowered by state symbols and apparatuses, the image interweaves the historical, juridical and political as a means to legitimise the normativities of heterosexuality and the nuclear family. SDMF’s self-sanctioned advocacy is achieved through the active appropriation of the private and the political, exemplified by the image of Lee and his wife along with the precession of Lee’s reputation as statesman and founding father of Singapore; this (self) righteousness is augmented by the indexical signifier of judicial authority, through its symbolic power, that further cements the self-proclaimed moral legitimacy of the page’s diatribes. Furthermore, by amalgamating the private and the ideological, and ascribing the spousal relationship between Lee and Kwa as symbols of state-sanctioned socio-sexual normativity, SDMF subjects state power to the will of an imagined-ideal(ised) construct of the family, even as these become subject to a right-wing politicisation of the private sphere—a biopolitics not of the state but of a virtual community masquerading as the state. The refusal of performance permissions by the IMDA exemplifies the government’s authority subjected to sectarian activism that, ironically, exploits the essence of biopolitics—fear. In Violence (2008), Žižek reveals how biopolitics is ‘ultimately a politics of fear; it focuses on defence from potential victimisation or harassment.’34 Such a politics ‘resorts to fear as its 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 69 ultimate mobilising principle [and it] always relies on the manipulation of a paranoid ochlos or multitude: it is the frightening rallying of frightened people.’35 Fear, here, is not merely that of the (homo)sexual and naked body that threatens the moral consciousness of an Asian, specifically, Singaporean bureaucratic body. Fear is instead appropriated by frightened people to, inversely, create fear in the government—fear of the loss of the people’s mandate. Apart from urging the government to prohibit all shows in the festival and questioning ‘why the government [is] letting their fences down and allow[ing] such obscene and dubious “art” performances to be staged,’36 the author of the Facebook post exploited fear by claiming that ‘If the government continue[s] to allow such decadent sex and LGBT-themed shows to be propagated, then it should be prepared for any ensuing backlash.’37 The consequent discussion in the post of the 2016 US presidential election and the Democrats’ defeat is used as a veiled threat to local authorities about how the ruling party will lose its power privilege should Singapore turn left and liberal. Given the significant impact of new media on the ruling party’s poorest election results in 2011 since it came to power in 1965,38 it is no surprise that the IMDA publicly issued the refusal of permissions just days after the post was made. The act of censorship in the 11th hour reifies what Terence Chong, in The Theatre and the State in Singapore, observes about the Singapore government’s retention of Section 377A: it is an act ostensibly to ‘placate the interests of the religious and moral conservatives, many of whom occupy positions of affluence and power.’39 The incident reveals a social consciousness that has successfully imbibed the narratives of Asian values purported by the state. The success of such a biopolitics, advanced by culture as ideological apparatus, is evident in the ways (part of) the populace now having become assimilated by such an ideology in turn regulates other bodies and the powers that engendered these ideologies. Complicit bodies thus become the state’s new repressive apparatus that in turn seeks to keep the state’s continued subjugation of deviant bodies in check. contemPorary multiculturalism anD the limits of tolerance The M1 Fringe Festival controversy exposes an already widening rift that exemplifies the failings of state-prescribed multiculturalism in the contemporary, even as these sentiments are, ironically, predicated on the need to preserve such imagined delineations of culture and cultural-isms. The inci- 70 M. C. C. TAN dent is but one of a growing number of social performances of intolerance in Singapore’s recent history. In 2014, an Islamic religious teacher Noor Deros started the ‘Wearwhite’ campaign as a politicised statement against the growing success of the Pink Dot movement—an annual gathering of people in support of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in Singapore.40 Started in 2009, Pink Dot SG has seen growing attendance, with almost 28,000 people in 2016,41 and has influenced similar movements in Hong Kong (2011), Penang (2011), Montreal (2012) and Okinawa (2013). Recognising the burgeoning threat to religious conservative values, Noor’s ‘Wearwhite’ movement has since been championed by the Christian community, specifically Senior Pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church, Lawrence Khong. Entitled ‘We.Wear.White,’ Khong’s advocacy is based on ‘the church’s stance on heterosexual marriage and the “natural family” [and this is] in keeping with the social norms of “Singapore’s conservative majority.”’42 More recently, complaints made from anonymous public members led to the removal of a kissing scene between two male characters in the musical Les Miserables (2016).43 Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (2016) stirred equal controversy due to its homosexual content, with LeFou, Disney’s first openly gay character, demonstrating sexual attraction for Gaston. The ‘gay moment’ in the film led Anglican Bishop Rennis Ponniah and the National Council of Churches in Singapore to issue a public call of ‘discretion,’ particular to Christian families with children.44 Such incidents reveal a disturbing intermixing of religion, cultural practice and polity. The naked partisanship undermines Singapore’s professed commitment to secular multiculturalism and demonstrates a failure of multiculturalism in part due to the myopic delineation of ‘culture’ as purported by the state. Conceived and prescribed by the state, multiculturalism as political ideology is naked biopolitical practice. This specific exercise of sovereign power over bodies in living spaces has been frequently regarded as one of the cornerstones of Singapore’s peace and harmony and a distinctive feature of the nation’s marketed identity. Yet, the ruling People’s Action Party, often synonymously regarded as the government and the state given the history of its dominant single party rule since independence in 1965, has propagated the concept of multiculturalism as one of ‘limited inclusivity [that is] premised on neat categories of race and religion,’45 an inherited colonial racialisation of bodies with little regard for the diversity and complexity of cultural heritage and ethnic plurality in a region where intermixing and hybridity have always been commonplace. This post- 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 71 colonial multiculturalism, as Lian Kwen Fee citing Daniel Goh, defines, stands in contrast to Western liberal multiculturalism for only ‘ethnic identities and interests of significant communities identified by the state were officially accepted. Over time such identities were scripted by the State, with the consequence that post-colonial multiculturalism came to be bureaucratic, authoritarian and essentialised.’46 Predicated on the simplistic construct of ethno-racial categorisations, the ‘Chinese-Malay-IndianOthers’ (CMIO) model has come to dictate the politics of governance; multiculturalism, advanced by various state apparatuses, is a lived experience for Singaporeans since policies from education, housing, health, census, religious worship and community celebrations to citizenship are advanced on this race-based biopolitics. It is ‘the clearest expression and cognition of a functioning Singaporean culture.’47 Such a narrowly conceived understanding precludes other notions of culture. Minority cultures (the physically and mentally disabled, homosexuals, single mothers) consequently remain invisible and are subject to conformist scrutiny of majority-based mentalities. The emerging visibility of other cultures, and lived presence of new foreign Other/s, has challenged conventional positions on the concept of a ‘Singapore community.’ While most encounters are of a safe distance, there have been increasing confrontations met with ideological and cultural violence. Being one of the most open economies in the world and heavily dependent on foreign migratory labour for high-skilled industries and low-skilled work, the social dynamics has shifted significantly given the high composition of non-Singaporeans (39 per cent as of 2017 and this includes both permanent residents and those on foreign work passes)48 living in the city-state of 719.1 square kilometres. The state-prescribed sensibilities of ‘multiculturalism’ have been challenged and the lived (cultural) experiences of Singaporeans have become interrogated daily. These rapidly evolving political-economic circumstances have resulted in an obligatory interaction between self, community and Others. Such tensions were also revealed in this controversy for, in the penultimate paragraph of the Facebook post, the author of ‘Pornography Disguised as Art’ underscored the festival director’s foreignness as means of punishment. The post accused Sean Tobin, a prominent Australian educator and theatre-maker who lives and teaches in Singapore, of encouraging social division and dictating the Singapore arts scene through portrayals of ‘sex, homosexuality and transgenderism.’49 Making the assumption that he ‘has no vested interest in Singapore’s well-being,’50 and having little erudition of the 72 M. C. C. TAN contributions Tobin has made to the Singapore theatre scene in the last 20 years, the post reveals the mounting displeasure with economically driven migration and foreignness of Singapore’s ethno-racialised cultural composition. Other/ed bodies must conform or be disciplined, and these include foreign bodies. Violence, real or symbolic, is a seeming inevitability of the proximity to one’s Neighbour for as Žižek, citing Freud, observes, the Neighbour is inevitably a ‘traumatic intruder, someone whose different way of life (or rather, way of jouissance materialised in its social practices and rituals) disturbs us, throws the balance of our way of life off the rails, when it comes too close, this can also give rise to an aggressive reaction aimed at getting rid of this disturbing intruder.’51 This aggression is most evident in the reactionary blog post on ‘Singapore Affairs’ earlier considered. Writing in support of the ‘truth’ to the controversy, the anonymous blogger derails the festival organisers and Arts Engage, an arts practitioners collective that engages in issues of art practice and public statements in defence of the two censored performances as innovative works, and questions how much of such boundarypushing ‘is enough for such art groups and do they expect the wider society to just mind their own business?’.52 While the artistic community and other members of the public have commented on how those in support of SDMF’s bigoted views could have simply minded their own business and not seen these performances, in other words tolerate differences in life worlds, the confrontation reveals how coming too close to a Neighbour threatens the moral legitimacy of the bureaucratic body. They exemplify Žižek’s thesis on contemporary multiculturalism: Today’s liberal tolerance towards others, the respect of otherness and openness towards it, is counterpointed by an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the Other is just fine, but only insofar as his presence is not intrusive, insofar as this Other is not really other […] My duty to be tolerant towards the Other effectively means that I should not get too close to him, intrude on his space.53 In Singapore, lived multiculturalism, ‘multiculturalism as it is lived out as an everyday reality’54 is, more accurately, practised tolerance through a fierce possession of a right to not be harassed by, and to keep a safe distance from, the Other. Given the conditions of rapid globalisation, high population density and the palpable presence of foreigners consequent of economically liberal policies, this distance is increasingly narrowing with 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 73 Lee urging greater tolerance not just for religious or racial Others but foreign Others as well.55 Additionally, digital media has awarded ‘intolerant’ and xenophobic individuals and groups with greater audacity, voice and influence; the ‘right’ to not be harassed, to ‘tolerate,’ is increasingly dissipating. The ‘Protection from Harassment Act,’ a parliamentary statute passed only in 2014 that abolishes the common tort law of harassment and expansion of it to cover acts of cyberbullying and online harassment as a criminal offence, exemplifies Žižek’s view that ‘[w]hat increasingly emerges as the central human right in late-capitalist society is the right not to be harassed, which is a right to remain at a safe distance from others.’56 As ideology and practice, tolerance has limitations, exemplified by the fringe festival controversy. Žižek posits how tolerance has become an ideological mechanism, a form of false consciousness and mystification, in contemporary political multiculturalisms. Examples of violence, racism and discrimination are rendered simply as events of intolerance and not addressed for their embedded realities of the need for systemic and structural change; this both subverts and denies the real social problems that are festering. Tolerance becomes a façade that therefore masks the issues of ‘inequality, exploitation, injustice.’57 Political differences have, through tolerance as ideology, become translated into differences in cultural beliefs and practices that must be managed and simply accepted. In multicultural practice, as seen in Singapore’s brand of multiculturalism, tolerance sees its limits for it cannot facilitate genuine social harmony since ‘culture itself is the source of barbarism in the sense that it is one’s direct identification with a particular culture which renders one intolerant to other cultures.’58 The process is exacerbated because culture is regarded as personal and private, and the means to manage irruptive events is to practise tolerance. The debate surrounding censorship, nudity, the arts and its role in society, as seen in comments following the Facebook post as well as blog posts such as those of Arts Engage, border on the issue of the ‘private’ versus ‘public.’ The argument posited by SDMF and those who support its cause is one that equates the bare/d body in a public performance as necessarily pornographic, and should therefore be prohibited—the naked self must be contained within a private space. The private is a site of the individual as opposed to the public which remains the space of the community. The mentalities underlying such ‘conservative’ propositions and distinctions exemplify Agamben’s analysis of contemporary biopolitics. Referencing the Greeks who distinguished the ‘natural reproductive life,’59 the biological fact of life (zoē), and bios, ‘a qualified form of life,’60 and the form or 74 M. C. C. TAN manner in which that life is lived (the political life), Agamben asserts that in contemporary (authoritarian) politics, zoē, contained within the polis, has become the object of control in the form of the state’s organisational power. There is a loss of distinction between these two forms of life and ‘life’ is now conceived primarily as zoē, with no guarantee of a quality of life or political agency, of bios. This, Agamben notes, is the beginnings of biopolitics. The biopoliticised ‘private,’ as SDMF purports, is manufactured from the dissipated distinctions between zoē and bios for the construct of the private and public body is merely the consequence of politicised ‘Asian’ values. This dissolution of the two forms of life becomes evident in the ways in which the naked body needs to be censored and purged from the public since ‘zoē has become bios […] private sphere and public function are now absolutely identical.’61 The bare/d body is denied political agency, of quality and manner in which it is to live, how it lives and how it performs. Ironically, in the state’s performance of the denial of (public) performance permissions, Undressing Room and Naked Ladies inadvertently exposed the shifting mechanics of contemporary biopower and the reduction of life to bare-life in Singapore. Through and as performance, both works interrogate the manufactured distinctions between public and private spheres of how the body is a site of multiple meanings: nudity is not necessarily private or public, sexual or pornographic. The performances also exemplify this false dichotomy posited by Kant and cited by Žižek: ‘Private’ is not one’s individual as opposed to communal ties, but the very communal-institutional order of one’s particular identification; while ‘public’ is the transnational universality of the exercise of one’s Reason […] one participates in the universal dimension of the ‘public’ sphere precisely as a singular individual extracted from or even opposed to one’s substantial communal identification—one is truly universal only when radically singular, in the interstices of communal identities.62 The ‘interstices of communal identities’ and the universal-singular, the participation of the singular in the universal, is what Undressing Room seeks to attain. In the performance, it is the natural body and the singular Other that participants encounter; it is the encounter with bare-life but also the recovery and recuperation of the body’s agentive potential. The personal and personalised performance allows participants to recognise the Other body as singular and so truly universal. The performance is 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 75 done in complete silence and there is no exchange of words; this perhaps is a performative metaphor for the refusal to have language re-present and re-scribe the bodily experience. It can also be read as an encounter with a real body and the body as the real, that which is erased from symbolic inscription, where ‘all words cease.’63 Even though Undressing Room was not publicly performed, it continued as a private, by-invitation-only, performance. Participants were invited into a formal ritual performed in a white space set with a table and two stools, two teacups, a teapot, a clock and a pair of tea-lights. All items, including the furniture, were white— these are distinctly a metaphor for purity, wholeness, innocence and new beginnings found in a new exchange between unadorned bodies. Ming began the performance with a tea ceremony after which actor and spectator undressed each other, with each participant having full autonomy on how this proceeded. Throughout the event, silence was observed and the presence of the Other acknowledged only with the body. The body reveals truth and also singularity for as Ming recounts, ‘we see each other’s scars and wrinkles, breathe in each other’s odours, feel the sweat on our skin and the warmth of our body.’64 Feelings of shame, vulnerability and connection are common emotions that were reported in the post-performance conversations. This phenomenological encounter with the Other is a performance of the universality of the wholly Other: the experience, like the body, remains singular and distinct for every participant yet the performance indubitably exposes social and physical repressions engendered by bodies subject to biopower. The singular bare/d body becomes the site of the universal for in that nakedness, intimacy and connection evolve; there is an ‘honesty’ in the nudity as bodies are seen for and in their openness. While the work does not necessarily involve nakedness as participants can be in the state of semi-undress or even completely dressed, it is in the act of undressing another that the performance seeks to engender a universality—one of similarity in differences of sensuousness, sensations and sentiments. The performance site becomes a safe space to confront vulnerabilities and to trust an-Other body. ‘But in order to trust and connect, we must first remove our protective shields and open ourselves to the others […] So Undressing Room is actually an invitation to the participants to practice that.’65 In the act of undressing, of bare-ness, one recognises that the subject can transcend (and remove) culture and biopolitical identities, and has political agency and sovereignty—bios. In so doing, one comes to appreciate how, despite differences in form, shape, colour and smell, the body is universal. Undressing Room becomes the safe space for a performance 76 M. C. C. TAN Fig. 3.1 Production image from Undressing Room (2017), choreographed and devised by Ming Poon. (Photo: Olivia Kwok) encounter of ‘two persons embracing each other’s vulnerable state without any expectations and judgements’ (Fig. 3.1).66 the universal anD the multicultural While one can dismiss the M1 Fringe Festival controversy as a minor ‘disruption’ in the otherwise ‘harmonious’ social landscape in Singapore, and simply relegate this to a lack of tolerance between different life worlds, the deeper malaise of the disjuncture between economic liberalism and moral conservatism, of what constitutes ‘culture’ and (multi)culturalism, is ignored. Multiculturalism as a practice of tolerance has failed and if it is to thrive, a consensus of everyday customs and civility, rules of how to treat each other decently, must be established. This results in an intentional creation of a ‘universal’ custom that encompasses community identification and not merely multiculturalism as a legal space for different ways of life to compete.67 Žižek postulates that this ‘universal’ must be a consensus of practices not based on culture or cultural difference. Culture, as he explains, is both collective and particular, ‘exclusive of other cultures,’68 and because the individual who is the site of universality is also particular- 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 77 ised via a life world, culture becomes both ‘public,’ that is, a collective expression, and ‘private,’ that is, personal idiosyncrasies. According to Žižek, the only way to overcome intolerance (and violence) is to ‘extricate the core of the subject’s being, its universal essence, from culture […] the subject has to be kulturlos or “culture-less.”’ In Undressing Room, it is this bare/d, particular body, the intimate removal of biopoliticised identities that the subject attains to the condition of being kulturlos. The bare/d body reveals the space between the political and the natural, and reminds those who participate that their bodies have been subject to the exercise of biopower disguised as cultural values. The performance exemplifies how the subject can be kulturlos, encountered as another singular person and in that singularity, of experience and of bodies, a universalism is experienced. The events surrounding the show’s censoring also evidence the limitations of multiculturalism in contemporary Singapore. While the state actively enforces engagement and interaction between races, cultures and ethnicities, and ‘equal’ representation, through state policies such as ethnic quotas in public housing arrangements, the celebration of cultural events and festivals and, most recently, a controversial Parliamentary Bill ensuring that minority races, such as the Malays, reserve the right to run for the elected presidency in specified terms of office, lived multiculturalism performs a different reality as the M1 Fringe Festival controversy epitomises. The limits of tolerance for difference, evinced by the increasingly evident breakdown of Singapore’s ethno-racial multiculturalism, reveal the need for a renewed discernment of what constitutes the ‘multicultural’ in a globalist context: there needs to be ‘civic engagement which unpicks the negative treatment of “difference” […] and the reform to institutions of public culture so minority identities are not ignored or confined to a private sphere.’69 In recounting his experiences performing Undressing Room, Ming poignantly recalls a proverb by twelfth-century Sufi poet Rumi, ‘Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden, I will meet you there.’70 In this interstice between the body as public and private, particular and universal, right and wrong, multiculturalism in Singapore can be reconceived beyond ethno-racial understandings; it begins in the encounter with the Other as a (bare/d) body. In locating its efficacy and place in contemporary (bio) politics, performance and theatre can, and must, be critical sites of potential and possibility for new multiculturalisms and new social life worlds in Singapore. A new politics can be found, to return to Agamben, in the 78 M. C. C. TAN reclamation of life from the biopolitical body, a renewed distinction between zoē and bios where (bare) life is parted from political life. notes 1. Akshita Nanda, ‘IMDA denies rating to two shows in 2017 M1 Fringe Festival for “excessive nudity,”’ The Straits Times, November 25, 2016, accessed February 2, 2017, http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/ imda-denies-rating-to-two-shows-in-2017-m1-fringe-festival-for-excessive-nudity. 2. Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family, ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’, Facebook, November 22, 2016, accessed February 3, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/Singaporeans DefendingMarriageFamily/. Refer also to the mirror site: Singapore Affairs, ‘M1 Fringe Festival—Pornography Disguised as Art?,’ November 22, 2016, accessed February 3, 2017, https://singaporeaffairs.wordpress. com/2016/11/22/m1-fringe-festival-pornography-disguised-as-art/. 3. Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family, ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ 4. Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family, ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ 5. Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family, ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ 6. Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family, ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ 7. Goh Wei Hao, ‘Lobbying against “Naked Ladies” and “Undressing Room” is the reason S’pore arts won’t truly thrive,’ Mothership.sg, December 7, 2016, accessed February 3, 2017, http://mothership.sg/2016/12/ lobbying-against-naked-ladies-and-undressing-room-is-the-reason-sporearts-wont-truly-thrive/. 8. This term will be further explicated in the subsequent paragraphs. 9. Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 245. 10. Foucault, Society Must be Defended, 240. 11. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1978), 140. 12. Foucault, Society Must be Defended, 253. 13. Günter Berghaus, Avant-Garde Performance: Live Events and Electronic Technologies (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 134. 14. Bojana Pejić, ‘Bodyscenes: an Affair of the Flesh,’ in Marina Abramović: Artist Body: Performances 1969–1998, eds. Marina Abramović and Velimir Abramović (Milan: Charta, 1998), 28. 3 ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 79 15. For more information on Naked Ladies, visit http://www.theafitzjames. com/nakedladies/. 16. Karl Toepfer, ‘Nudity and Textuality in Postmodern Performance,’ Performing Arts Journal 54 (1996): 78. 17. William Shakespeare, King Lear, 3.4.104–105. Line references from the Arden Edition, edited by R.A. Foakes, 1997. 18. Shakespeare, King Lear, 3.4.104–105. 19. Ming Poon, Email Interview with Marcus Tan, February 23, 2017. 20. Ming Poon, ‘Undressing Room: Interview with Ming Poon,’ M1 Singapore Fringe 2017: Art & Skin, Facebook, November 25, 2016, accessed January 15, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/undressingroom.mingpoon/? fref=ts. My own italics. 21. Foucault, Society Must be Defended, 252. 22. Imelda Saad, ‘PM Lee: Why Singapore must ‘leave Section 377A alone,’ The Straits Times, October 23, 2007, accessed March 18, 2017, http:// news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Stor y/ A1Story20071023-31769.html. 23. Associated Press, ‘Singapore reforms sex laws—but not for homosexuals,’ The Guardian, October 24, 2007, accessed March 18, 2017, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/24/gayrights.uk. 24. Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family, ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ 25. Michael D. Barr, ‘Lee Kuan Yew and the “Asian Values” Debate,’ Asian Studies Association of Australia 24.3 (2000): 311. 26. Ibid. 27. Fareed Zakaria, ‘Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew,’ Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (1994): 113. 28. Lee Hsien Loong, ‘“Family an important building block of society”: PM Lee in CNY Message,’ Channel News Asia, February 7, 2016, accessed March 28, 2017, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/ family-an-important/2493710.html. 29. Lee, ‘Family an important building block of society.’ 30. Singapore Affairs, ‘M1 Fringe Festival—Pornography Disguised as Art?’ https://singaporeaffairs.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/m1-fringe-festival-pornography-disguised-as-art/. Accessed March 2, 2017. 31. Foucault, Society Must be Defended, 253. 32. Lim Tin Seng, ‘Two Child Policy,’ Singapore Infopedia, National Library Board Singapore, November 22, 2016, accessed April 1, 2017, http:// eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2016-11-09_103740.html. 33. As of March 2018, this banner image has since been replaced by another which features the former Supreme Court and an artistic representation of a heteronormative family. 80 M. C. C. TAN 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. Slavoj Žižek, Violence (New York: Picador, 2008), 40. Žižek, Violence, 41. Singapore Affairs, ‘M1 Fringe Festival—Pornography Disguised As Art?’ Singapore Affairs, ‘M1 Fringe Festival—Pornography Disguised As Art?’ See Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, The National University of Singapore, ‘Impact of New Media on General Election 2011,’ accessed April 1, 2017, http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/ips/ event/impact-of-new-media-on-general-election-2011. See also Zhang Weiyu, ‘Social media and elections in Singapore: comparing 2011 and 2015,’ Chinese Journal of Communication 9, no. 4 (2016): 367–384. Terence Chong, The Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance (London: Routledge, 2011), 138. For more information on Pink Dot, visit https://pinkdot.sg/. Regina Marie Lee, ‘“Traditional values” wear white campaign returning to Pink Dot weekend,’ Today, May 23, 2016, accessed April 1, 2017, http:// www.todayonline.com/singapore/network-churches-revives-campaignwear-white-pink-dot-weekend. Lee, ‘“Traditional values” wear white campaign returning to Pink Dot weekend.’ See Chew Hui Min, ‘Same-sex kiss cut from Singapore staging of Les Miserables,’ The Straits Times, June 11, 2016, accessed April 1, 2017, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/same-sex-kiss-cut-fromsingapore-staging-of-les-miserables. See Foo Jie Ying, ‘Disney’s Beauty and The Beast prompts advisory from Anglican Bishop,’ The Straits Times, March 13, 2017, accessed April 1, 2017, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/disneys-beauty-and-thebeast-prompts-advisory-from-anglican-bishop. See also Kelly Ng, ‘“Gay Moment” in Beauty and the Beast totally unnecessary: National Council of Churches,’ Today, March 14, 2017, accessed April 1, 2017, http://m. todayonline.com/singapore/gay-moment-beauty-and-beast-totallyunnecessary-national-council-churches. Nazry Bahrawi, ‘Is Singapore truly multicultural?,’ Today, February 14, 2014, accessed April 1, 2017, http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ singapore-truly-multicultural. Lian Kwen Fee, ‘Multiculturalism in Singapore: Concept and Practice,’ in Multiculturalism, Migration and the Politics of Identity in Singapore, ed. Lian Kwen Fee (Singapore: Springer, 2015), 19. Geoffrey Benjamin, ‘The Cultural Logic of Singapore’s “Multiracialism,”’ in Singapore: Society in Transition, ed. Riaz Hassan (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976), 116. See Department of Statistics Singapore, ‘Population Trends 2016,’ accessed April 25, 2017, http://www.singstat.gov.sg/docs/default- 3 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. ‘PORNOGRAPHY DISGUISED AS ART’: BARE/D BODIES, BIOPOLITICS… 81 source/default-documentlibrary/publications/publications_and_papers/ population_and_population_structure/population2017.pdf. ‘Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family,’ ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ ‘Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family,’ ‘M1 Fringe Festival— Pornography Disguised as Art?’ Žižek, Violence, 59. Singapore Affairs, ‘M1 Fringe Festival Statement—Speaking of the “Truth,”’ accessed April 1, 2017, https://singaporeaffairs.wordpress. com/2016/12/06/m1-fringe-festival-statement-speaking-of-the-truth/. Žižek, Violence, 41. Bahrawi, ‘Is Singapore Truly Multicultural?’ See Chun Han Wong, ‘Singapore Leader Urges Tolerance of Foreigners,’ The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2012, accessed April 30, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444506004577613 311934830648. Žižek, Violence, 41. Žižek, Violence, 141. Žižek, Violence, 142. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 1. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 183. Žižek, Violence, 143. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 2: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–155, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978, 1988), 164. Ming Poon, Email Interview with Marcus Tan, February 23, 2017. Ming Poon, Email interview, February 23, 2017. Ming Poon, Email interview, February 23, 2017. Slavoj Žižek, ‘Zizek—Multiculturalism and Tolerance,’ YouTube, November 18, 2014, accessed March 3, 2017, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=DkkpOBvZLr8. Žižek, Violence, 141. Tariq Modood, ‘Multiculturalism after 77,’ The RUSI Journal 153, no. 2 (2008): 17. Ming Poon, Email interview, February 23, 2017. BiBliograPhy Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 82 M. C. C. TAN Associated Press. 2007. Singapore Reforms Sex Laws—But Not For Homosexuals. The Guardian, October 24. Accessed March 18, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/24/gayrights.uk. Bahrawi, Nazry. 2014. Is Singapore Truly Multicultural? Today, February 14. Accessed April 1, 2017. http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ singapore-truly-multicultural. Barr, Michael D. 2000. Lee Kuan Yew and the “Asian Values” Debate. Asian Studies Association of Australia 24 (3): 309–334. Benjamin, Geoffrey. 1976. 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