MERCHANTS NOW RULE THE LANDS: READING POTENTIALITY AND WRITING POSSIBILITIES THROUGH SYAIR FROM 19TH CENTURY SINGAPORE

Abstract

This thesis questions the position of Malay literature in Singapore historiography. While many historians treat these materials with unease, I propose that a methodology seeking to explore the historical possibilities such texts contain, by treating them as spaces of potentiality, can allow us to focus on absence over presence of the pasts. This approach will be explored through the translation and consideration of three semi-anonymous syair composed in Singapore during the early half of the 19th century – a time when the island was just beginning its conversion to be a colony, and its society finding itself at the crossroads between two unfinished worlds.