Cultural Geography

as well as what it should ‘remember to forget’

(Devan, 1999: 22). Hindsight is hence perpetu-

ally unstable, shifting with each perspective.

What is valorized and mapped as ‘heritage’ in

official and popular imaginative geographies

becomes locked into questions such as who

controls (and benefits from) the whole process

of transforming ‘history’ into tangible pres-

ences (and hence also absences) on the land-

scape and for what purposes (such as group

identity formation, nationalism or tourism)

(Bonnemaison, 1997; Chang, 1997; Jones and

Bromley, 1996; Jones and Varley, 1999; Kwok

et al., 1999; Parenteau et al., 1995; Shaw and

Jones, 1997).

While the postcolonial state in many instances

(as in Singapore: see Kong and Yeoh, 1994) has

exercised heavy-handed control over the defini-

tion of what constitutes the nation’s memory and

the actual work of heritagizing, other agencies,

including marginal groups, have also played a

part in some of these struggles over place. Even

in Singapore, in responding to state-envisioned

heritage landscapes, there are clearly alternative

readings and resistances within the body of the

postcolonial nation against such hegemonic

intentions, although little expressed in confronta-

tional style. Some have clearly found state-pro-

pelled conservation and preservation efforts

superficial, with little penetrating beneath the

veneer of commercialization to creatively con-

nect with the past. As such, so-called heritage

landscapes designed by state agencies have been

dismissed by some as ‘a piece of kitsch ... some

kind of feeble confection’ (architect Tay Kheng

Soon, The Straits Times,18 February 2000) and

by others as somewhat bland and disengaged

from the development of a sense of national

identity.

Elsewhere in the postcolonial world, the poli-

tics of what constitutes heritage continue to

unfold as nations search to define their identi-

ties. In the state-designated ‘historic city’ of

Melaka, for example, Portuguese Eurasians

resist being excised from official accounts by

their ‘chameleon-like abilities’ in repositioning

their ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ within Malaysian

debates about postcolonial national identity

(Sarkissian, 1997). In the same city, Cartier

(1993; 1997: 555) examines how place-based

constructions of cultural identity and representa-

tions of state nationalism are drawn into the

politics of space surrounding Bukit China, a

monumental traditional Chinese burial ground,

and details the protracted struggles over its trans-

formation into a ‘nationscape, a site-specific dis-

tillation of half a millennium of Malaysian

history’.

POSTCOLONIAL MIGRATIONS

AND THE ‘MIGRANCY OF

IDENTITY’

[T]he postcolonial [highlights] the complexities of dias-

poric identification which interrupt any ‘return’ to

ethnically closed and ‘centred’ original histories ... in

the global and transcultural context ... It made the

‘colonies’ themselves, and even more, large tracts of

the ‘post-colonial’ world, always-already ‘diasporic’ in

relation to what might be thought of as their cultures of

origin. The notion that only the multi-cultural cities of

the First World are ‘diaspora-ised’ is a fantasy which

can only be sustained by those who have never lived

in the hybridised spaces of a Third World, so-called

‘colonial’, city. (Hall, 1996: 250)^6

That postcolonial nations are ‘always-already

diasporic’ and constitute ‘hybridised spaces’

comes as no surprise to those of us living in

once-colonized cities such as Singapore. As

Harper writes of the polyglot city once consti-

tuted by streams of immigrants from China,

India, the Malay archipelago and other far-flung

places and dominated by a small European impe-

rial diaspora:

Singapore is a child of diaspora. Its history embodies

many of the tensions of blood and belonging that the

concept evokes. Singapore testifies to the difficulties of

creating a modern nation-state on a model inherited

from Europe in a region where history mocks the

nation-state’s claims to cultural and linguistic exclu-

siveness. The post-colonial experience of Singapore has

been dominated by the attempts of the state – an artifact

of British rule – to surmount these constraints and to

create a national community bounded by a common

culture and a sense of place, and bonded by individual

allegiance. (1997: 261)

As colonialism reached far and deep into once-

localized societies, it generated a multitude of

mobilities across borders, coalescing into what

M.L. Pratt calls ‘contact zones’ par excellence

which invoke the ‘spatial and temporal copres-

ence of subjects previously separated by

geographic and historical disjunctures, and

whose trajectories now intersect’ (1992: 7).

Diasporas of all hues – imperial diasporas,

labour diasporas, trade diasporas, cultural dias-

poras among them (see Cohen, 1997, for a typol-

ogy) – quickened in response to the demands of

empire, criss-crossed, interlocked and produced

hybridized spaces arranged in kaleidoscopic dis-

array. As earlier discussed, one of the primary

tasks of postcolonial nation-building is to trans-

form a motley crew of diasporic orphans, whose

emotional homelands diverge from their physical

locations as well as from each other, into a settled

POSTCOLONIAL GEOGRAPHIES OF PLACE AND MIGRATION 373

3029-ch19.qxd 03-10-02 10:58 AM Page 373