SCRIPTING SUICIDAL SUBJECTIVITIES: HISTORICISING THE MEANINGS OF SUICIDE IN SINGAPORE, 1970-1980

Abstract

This thesis studies the phenomenon of suicide in Singapore in the years 1970-1980 by examining the plausible interpretations held by society towards this act. The hermeneutic approach underlies my inquiry in regarding it as an act that does not stand outside of interpretation and hence should not be assumed as ‘essentially’ problematic. Thus, I question what values, meanings, and beliefs are used to perceive and interpret the statistics configuring suicide and propelling its urgency as a problem in the 1970s. I close-read local English-language newspapers to reveal a moral-ethical dimension that drove the concern over suicide in the 1970s. First, I elucidate the anxieties and concerns of the state and the newspapers’ interlocutors to reveal that suicide was regarded as a problem as it evidenced a failure of modernity. By surfacing fears of moral erosion that accompanied the state’s efforts towards modernising the country, and fronting the moral meanings suicide was regarded with, I explain how increased suicides were interpreted to evidence the connection between modernity and moral degeneration. However, I pick up on the papers’ hesitance to present suicide decisively as an outcome of either, which I track further using oral interviews to reconstruct other existential values by which suicide could be understood. Today, suicide is predominantly a socio-scientific problem. However, my thesis argues for the recognition of a moral-ethical palimpsest that has been largely sidestepped, which has repercussions for the suicide prevention policies of today. This thesis also endeavours to contribute to the hitherto-uncharted grounds of historical works on suicide in politically independent Singapore and suggest its value as a prism: in historicising suicide, I also unveil how Singapore’s early years of development promulgated mixed feelings towards progress and the consequent trauma of such changes, something quite far removed from a naïve belief in material progress.