The politics of language of Singaporean women writers

Abstract

This study critically examines the way power configures in the lives of Singaporean women writers and their oppression as a sociological problem. Here, oppression is not analysed as social-structural. Rather, it is the culture of silence around specific oppression and marginalisation through the destruction of language — its concomitant disjunctures, contradictions, and unthought. By utilising feminist theories, women’s language, in speech and writing, is framed as a modus of contestation, resistance, and reconstruction. Furthermore, by addressing the implicit politics of women writers, this study attempts to make tangible and intelligible the reproduction and subversion of unequal systems in literary field as well as the broader Singaporean society. Findings reveal there is potentiality in forming a coalition to reconstruct a new field of language that is just, and for practical purposes such as reforming cultural policies in Singapore.