"Inside us, there is a riot": Heteroglossia and racial narratives in Chong Tze Chien's 'Charged'

Abstract

This paper will examine the narrative structure of Chong Tze Chien’s Charged with reference to the Bakhtinian framework of heteroglossia. Specifically, the paper will argue that the playwright’s decision to structure the play in a manner that highlights the existence of multiple subjective narratives centering on one event allows the play to be considered as having a heteroglossic narrative construction. The paper will go on to argue that structuring the play in such a fashion was meant to aid in the playwright’s goal of exposing and dismantling the prevalent discourse on race in Singapore, which the playwright depicts in the play as an authoritative monologic discourse that is ultimately responsible for fracturing society. The paper will examine how the heteroglossic narrative structure allows the playwright to incorporate other concepts of Bakhtin’s such as unfinalizability, and the notion of truth being discursively constructed, which in turn allows the playwright to dismantle the monologic authoritative discourse of race by framing it as merely one of multiple subjective discourses. Finally, this paper will argue why Charged merits further analysis as a study of the ways individuals exist in relation to authoritative discourses, and how it can make contributions to the field of discourse analysis despite being a fictional text.