In this challenging study, Jacqueline Lo convincingly shows the ways in which contemporary English-language theatrical texts from Malaysia and Singapore resist and are complicit with the ideologies and practices of their respective postcolonial states. Lo's main contention is that there is no “pure” oppositional position outside the state and its structures and discourses of power. Following the work of Michel Foucault, Lo argues that this is not a simple negative judgment because power is not only coercive but productive as well. Nor does she view power as “an inert and monolithic system” (p. 189); rather, she sees it as an ongoing process of competition and negotiation that must continually be reproduced and modified. In this process, state discourses of power are necessary to subject formation and, consequently, to resistance as well as compliance. Culture and theater do not escape such relations, especially in places such as Malaysia and Singapore, where...
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Book Review|
February 01 2007
Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore
Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore
. By Jacqueline Lo. Hong Kong
: Hong Kong University Press
, 2004
, xi
, 227
pp. $49.50 (cloth).Journal of Asian Studies (2007) 66 (1): 283–285.
Citation
Michael H. Bodden; Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore. Journal of Asian Studies 1 February 2007; 66 (1): 283–285. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911807000514
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