Merlion : postcolonializing Judith Butler in Alfian Sa'at's Asian Boys trilogy.

Abstract

Alfian’s Asian Boys trilogy, like this thesis, figures into the analogy of the Merlion – a hybrid of two seemingly impossible notions – Singaporean and gay. The reinvention refers to Alfian’s queer approach to postcolonial plays that use the local Singaporean-English slang to discuss familiar postcolonial narrative tropes such as colonial history and racial politics. Then again, reinvention also refers to Alfian’s postcolonial approach to queer plays that exemplifies themes such as gay politics and the nature of performing gender. Evidently, hybridity is never the work of one element changing while another remains fully intact. Rather, the different elements become altered through a kind of double assimilation and interpenetration, forming a brand new being that is both familiar and yet, threatening.

This thesis, thus, is interested in postcolonizing Judith Butler’s gender theories with specific focus in the relationships between race and (homo)sexuality, and between the State and (homo)sexuality. Since Butler’s theories are expressly focused on the studies of performance, this thesis aims to elaborate and expand Butler’s gender-as-performance theory into the arenas of race and nationality, expressly to deconstruct Alfian’s Asian Boys trilogy.