Yesterday I decided to spend my afternoon going for a history talk to find out more, get some inspiration and free food at the reception (of which I think I am guilty of taking close to a quarter of the cheese cake. Such events always have receptions).

It turned out to be largely a pessimistic one by some established Singapore academics airing their grievances about how sad and academically difficult it is  to access sources from the National Archives. It was quite pessimistic and critical. The interesting part was that I actually met a few people who wrote some of my sources for extended essay on post-independence Singapore-Malaysia relations (where one professor thought I had already graduated and wrote it for my honors thesis. I don’t look that old, do I?)

The talk, which is meant to introduce their new book, focuses on this concept of “Gates” and hence “Keepers”, refering to Gate Keepers. There is some literary value in the multi-layered interpretations of the title. “Keeper” could refer to one who protects the integrity of History in preventing its corruption. But the very image of the gate implies a difficulty or obstruction in access. A keeper/gatekeeper could be one who ends up guarding history against the eyes of the public, “keeping” it from their knowledge.

Gremlin put it quite cheekily when I told her that I was going for this ”Makers and Keepers” thing (after some LOLing): “Isn’t it just ONE Maker and Keeper of history?” And she probably is right. A lot of the dialogue focused on how archives are about power and how arbitrary denial on legal, privacy, security or even technical issues become a hindrance to transparency. Archives which were supposed to be restaurants that supplied ingredients were reduced to bank vaults.

No doubt this is common in other countries as well. China’s bureaucratic red tape are a hindrance. India’s sheer lack of organisation too (plain havoc lol). But there are countries who put their archives online and a fair number who declassify documents after time has passed, like Britain. Not us. There is apparently hardly any material accessible about Lim Yew Hock’s government.

It’s quite sad and astonishing though — many of the books that I used for my extended essay were actually based off foreign sources when you check their bibliography. Even books written by Singaporeans about Singapore have to depend on sources from abroad, even the one which I recently read about David Marshall. How sad it is — that National History has to be derived from sources across the Causeway and beyond!

National History was then described as something that needed to be rescued from the state. Because it is something more than a tool of national indoctrination or political mobilisation, historical consciousness is a common identity that belongs to the individual. One would have thought at first that “Makers and Keepers’ both referred to the historian. But there probably is a distinction, I think it goes like this: there is one main Maker of history (LIKE A GOD LOL), and there are other (mortal) historians who have a right to make a historical narrative also, but are kept away from the sources by the Keepers of a single narrow Grand Narrative, that of the Singapore Story. The academics seemed to be quite against this idea of a single “Singapore Story”, with an outright challenge through the phrase “Singapore Stories” which were complex, overlapping and tangled.

At the end of the entire thing, there seemed to be a hint of idealism, where there was a hope for improvement and eventual transparency. Yet it was a weak and faltering hint . I think deep down, people knew not much would change. That’s normally how it is here anyway. There was a suggestion by one member of the audience who said that such an issue had to be made aware to the public or at least MPs. In all reality, it’s unlikely anything would change — why would it anyway?

It was then that I realised that idealism is actually a fruit of pessimism at its worst. There’s not much better to hope for…apart from tomorrow. “Idealistic” as one of the professors put it, is a word that is used in Singapore to scold someone.

I conclude with a quote about idealism from a controversial character: “And a life without convictions, without idealism, is a mere meaningless existence, and I’m sure most of you will agree that as human beings, we are worthy of a life much more meaningful than just that.”

******

It was the professor from NTU (who is NOT an historian)  i think, who crafted this short but memorable poetic part of his speech based on Emerson’s quote “Every wall is a door”…

(in poor paraphrase from my memory, like many of the things above)

Every wall is a door,
every gate an invitation
every lock is a puzzle.

Who says that every gate leads to hell,
and that every door goes nowhere,
and that behind every lock is a pandora’s box?
Perhaps what lies behind the lock is a National Treasure.

He ended his speech with a phrase he referred to earlier, “Count on me, Singapore”

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