Daryl Lim Wei Jie (b. 1990)
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
Here and Now: Daryl Lim Wei Jie’s Pasts and Futures as Contemplations on the Present
Written by Timothy Fong
Dated 19 Aug 2024
Daryl Lim Wei Jie’s work demonstrates a sustained engagement with how historical narratives in Singapore are shaped, remembered, and lived out. In a 2013 essay, Lim argues that Singapore’s culture is premised upon a “collective forgetting” of the past, with a nation-wide amnesia having been necessary to create a national identity by eliding uncomfortable memories (QLRS). He exhorts Singaporeans to do “more remembering and less forgetting […] while our nation is yet young”, underscoring the urgent need to reclaim Singapore’s past while it is still accessible (QLRS). This (re)discovery of shared history, I argue, can be facilitated by writers: if the process of acquiring historical knowledge requires one to actively allow “knowledge to be thought back to us — accordingly rethought, made meaningful”, then the task of “enabling [historical events] to cleave again to life” seems suited to writers who can powerfully meld “literal and literary elements” together (Gwee). Given Lim’s intertwined interests in history and literature, this introduction will focus on how Lim deals with historical threads in his two major published poetry collections, A Book of Changes (2016) and Anything But Human (2021).
At first glance, Changes and Human are concerned with the past and the future respectively. Changes explores the formation of Singapore’s national narratives, while Human imagines an apocalyptic future. However, they both, at their core, comment on the present: the interrogation of state narratives in Changes is rooted in contemporary experiences, while the hypothetical future presented by Human is extrapolated from the excesses of modern hyper-capitalist society. Ultimately, Lim reveals how perceptions of the past and the future are fundamentally mediated by the backdrop of the present readers inhabit, underscoring their utility as mirrors through which readers can see their lived realities in a new light.
A Book of Changes: National Narratives in the Lives of Individuals
The title of A Book of Changes, as well as the design of the book cover that is evocative of hexagrams, calls to mind the late-9th century divination classic, the I Ching. The I Ching is also known as The Book of Changes. There are “countless ways one can interpret” I Ching readings: they require metaphorical modes of thinking that go beyond the words on its pages (Redmond). In this light, Changes can thus be understood as an attempt to read between the lines of Singapore’s constructed history to recover lost narratives. With the title changing the definite article ‘the’ to the indefinite ‘a’, Lim further highlights the plurality of historical interpretations offered by Changes for readers to contemplate.
Changes primarily interrogates the government’s attempts to impose a sanitised version of history by foregrounding individuals’ experiences and thoughts, offering alternative ways of understanding historical events and their implications on the present. With a postmodernist “incredulity towards metanarratives”, Lim privileges individuals’ “little narrative[s]” instead, delving into the impacts of national narratives on the lives and thoughts of Singaporeans (Lyotard). In “Meanwhile”, the poem’s second and third stanzas list a continuous chain of events, with the semicolons separating them asserting an equality in significance between the monumental and the mundane. Thus, “the shredding / of top secret files” is placed side-by-side with “the squirting of chilli sauce / on fries”, and “a new Second Minister for Trade and Industry” seems just as significant as when “an ant / dies in a park connector”. In contrast to the torrent of these two stanzas that present an unending cascade of events, the final stanza ends the poem with a single line, “Meanwhile, my pen.” Lim highlights his power, as a writer, to draw attention to each of these diverse events in turn. In so doing, Lim demonstrates how literature can flexibly shift perspectives, revealing its potential to reframe established narratives.
Lim argues that these shifts are crucial, given the state’s power to also use language to construct their preferred narratives. He lays out these mechanisms in “The Event”, showing how the slipperiness of language can obfuscate elements that problematise desired narratives. In the title of the poem, the definite article “the” implies specificity, yet the “Event” itself is undefined: readers have no idea what it actually is. Abstracting further in the first line by referring to the event as “it”, language hides meaning rather than communicating it. Language, that is, takes on a Derridean quality, with an endless chain of signifiers that indefinitely defers meaning: the certainty of “There was a protest” quickly slips into the uncertainty of “or perhaps / there was only a group of six with illegible placards, / quickly broken up”, the equivocation minimising and eliminating the protest linguistically (italics mine). The process of forming a collective memory is truncated by those in power:
The editors had it down
to four inches, and left the rest
to a new restaurant. On TV, a professor said
something axiomatic.. . . . .
Those who knew wrote cryptic notes
in the margins of old books. The bureaucrats
lost the files in a flash flood(“The Event”)
The event is literally reduced to “four inches”; even the opening of a restaurant is afforded more space and consequently presented as more significant. Discussion is stifled to the banal, such as the “axiomatic” statement that provides no insights but seems incisive because it is uttered by a professor. While “bureaucrats / [losing] the files in a flash flood” sounds farcical, it is also devastatingly effective, with nobody questioning the loss. Consequently, the fact that there is no space for dissent facilitates the forgetting of elements that contradict official narratives. History, presented as “cryptic notes / in the margins of old books”, is reduced to inaccessible marginalia. With memory being purely abstract, as seen through the use of the jargonistic terms “discourse, / praxis and collective memory”, it is all but effaced, leaving only the “barest ghost of truth” — “barest ghost” doubly emphasising its spectral quality. The disappearance of “The Event” within a single stanza highlights how effective the state’s methods of narrative formation can be.
Lim asserts the necessity of relooking such state-sanctioned narratives. Through a creative revision of nation-building narratives that helped mould Singaporeans’ identity, Lim reveals them to be potential sites of contestation moving forward. He interrogates state narratives of pragmatism and control in relation to urban planning, transposing them upon nature. Lim invokes martial imagery in “Ann Siang Hill” — plants are “[f]oot-soldiers / of shrub and weed creep[ing] forward”; shophouses have “fortification[s]”, “turrets”, and “murder-holes” — to highlight nature’s resistance to Singapore’s rapid urban development which degrades natural spaces. Crucially, Lim portrays nature as having agency, just like humans. However, our alienation from nature makes us incapable of recognising its agency. Thus, Lim states that “There is / design here but it cannot / be easily discerned”, with our understanding of the land lost as we build over it. Consequently, what we are left with is the “fear” that “the earth / also has redevelopment plans”: the paradigm of development is imposed on nature, yet the remaining underlying tension highlights the impossibility of total control by the state over the primordial force of nature.
Lim further undermines this state narrative of control by speculating on Lee Kuan Yew’s thoughts with regards to urban planning, drawing significance from how closely intertwined Lee’s life story is with that of Singapore’s constructed history (Hong and Huang). In “Garden City”, Lim provocatively suggests that the assertion of control by the state masks its fear of losing this very control. He ascribes to Lee nightmares of “creepers worming / toppled brick and crumbling slab”, with the stark imagery of ruined buildings reflecting a fear of nature as a force that directly threatens and undoes development. Additionally, the striking image of a “tomb staked and splintered”, with the simultaneously sibilant and plosive “staked” and “splintered”, ascribes to nature a violent “[malevolence]” that the state endeavours to but fails to fully contain. By highlighting the limits of the state’s control, Lim pushes readers to think about alternative ways to relate to the environment, beyond the government’s narrative of development at all costs.
Lim further interrogates nation-building narratives by relooking major figures within Singapore’s history, urging for critical re-understandings of their narratives. In “Adnan”, Lim highlights the narrativising forces that construct the image of a war hero from the person. The persona muses: “If I had seen you / I would have compared you / to St. Sebastian”. The persona’s attempt to understand Adnan is based primarily on his own worldview, comparing the Muslim Adnan to a Christian saint. In the lines “By your feet you were hung, he said, / but I cannot help seeing you / in that pose of martyred ecstasy”, the persona persistently reimagines Adnan to cohere to the iconography of Saint Sebastian, reconfiguring Corporal Yaakub Biden’s testimony as a combatant in the battle (NewspaperSG). Likening Adnan to Lim Bo Seng, another Singaporean war hero, Lim underscores how they have both been co-opted into patriotic state narratives, eliding their personal stories and motivations. Ending the poem:
Like Lim Bo Seng
you did not fight for Singapore:
the ideals you died for
we dare not claim.(“Adnan”)
Lim highlights how Singapore was not even a sovereign nation at the time, and how these war heroes may have had personal reasons to fight that are not acknowledged in state narratives. In so doing, Lim does not completely reject such narratives — he instead asserts readers’ duty to think about their provenance and come to a personal understanding of them, facilitating a dialogue with the state’s positions.
Lim underscores the role of national narratives in not only shaping national identity, but also moulding individuals’ day to day lives. In “Kangchu”, Lim deftly portrays the influence of “clock time” in Singapore society, which can be understood as the prevalence of an “[i]ndustrial time-consciousness” in both the Singaporean workforce and society as a whole to maintain “the schedules of industry”, to the extent that people’s lives seem to run by clockwork (Chua). Lim opens a dialogue between two parallel characters, juxtaposing the experiences of a modern office worker against that of a 19th century plantation worker. By making them speak to each other through alternating stanzas in two columns, Lim spotlights how the demands of capitalism have a long history of dictating the lives of individuals in Singapore. For the kangchu worker, who works for a kangchu that oversees a plantation, his tasks are supervised “by a bulwark of guards”, making visible the coercive force underpinning labour. Meanwhile, the office worker has internalised the drive for productivity, making visible control unnecessary. He is perpetually frantic: from the moment he wakes up, he begins rushing, as reflected in the staccato rhythm of “wash face brush teeth wear shirt / no time eat breakfast”. His constant laments about time — “8 o’clock already”; “MRT take so long”; “shit damn late already” — demonstrate how he has internalised the state’s push for productivity, making his day driven by the pressures of time. Similarly, “Coffeeshop” elucidates the tensions between the Singaporean brand of economic pragmatism and individuals’ sensibilities. The coffeeshop is associated with “Tai gong’s soul” — having been owned by the family for “[f]our generations”, the coffeeshop is not merely a meaningless space, but is the site of decades of toil and is representative of their roots. Despite the coffeeshop’s sentimental value, the large amount of “[e]ight million dollars” is coldly presented as justification to give this up. Thus, Lim presents how individuals in Singapore grapple with national narratives that shape their thoughts and behaviours, revealing their extensive influence.
However, Lim asserts that readers are not merely subject to the influence of state forces: he encourages readers to envision how they can act to spark small changes. Against the broad strokes of national narratives that promote forgetting, Lim foregrounds specific dates and places that are significant to his individual lived experiences, such as “choa chu kang columbarium, 12 jan 2014” and “Mun Sun Fook Tuck Chee Temple, Sims Drive”. The temple, for example, has a rich history dating back to the coolies who established it in pre-independence Singapore, and which is now threatened by the spectre of redevelopment (J. Lim). Through the simple act of writing about it, Lim works against the spectre of collective amnesia, insisting upon the remembrance of details as a bulwark against constant development which undermines a stable identity. Locating the temple as a site “where the loam is daily / made and unmade, where the sea / unburdens and coaxes”, Lim reiterates the cyclic and repetitive nature of history, emphasising the importance of recording specific details important to us, lest they be forgotten.
To summarise, Changes elucidates the constructed national narratives which influence the lives of Singaporeans. Highlighting the role of these narratives in the state’s efforts to mould Singaporeans’ collective memory, Lim asserts the importance of personal narratives as a counterbalance through which readers can inculcate a more nuanced and polyphonic understanding of their identity. This critical engagement with both the past and present broadens readers’ horizons in terms of the alternative futures they can imagine, which is explored further through Anything But Human.
Anything But Human: Speculative Future as Warning
Just as Changes reimagines the past in relation to daily life, Human similarly grounds its speculative vision of the future in present-day experience. The title itself, Anything But Human, references post-humanist thought. In doing so, Human draws upon critiques of humanism and its anthropocentric prioritisation of the human over the wider network of life on earth, of which humans are fundamentally a part. As philosopher Rosi Braidotti argues, humanism, globalisation, and neoliberalism have converged in such a way that “all living species are caught in the spinning machine of the global economy”: life itself is commodified, such that its value is seen only in terms of economic productivity. Lim frames this as a failure of vision that desensitises humans to their surroundings. In “Expression of Contentment”, the persona claims to be “extraordinarily really very / comfortable”; the chain of intensifiers creates a bathetic effect, as if the persona is trying to convince himself and readers that he is in fact at ease. The persona’s state of comfort is in fact a state of sedation — he sees fantastical things without response, failing to fully engage with the outside world. The persona reports, “The tree outside my flat / turned blue and I said / nothing”, with his apathy rendered striking by the unnaturalness of what is being seen but not reacted to. Such indifference towards apocalyptic scenes illuminates the failings of humanistic perspectives, where the wider environment is devalued. The persona asks, “outside of a sundae / do you know what a strawberry / tastes like?” implying that even the ubiquitous strawberry has been driven to extinction in this post-apocalyptic world and only artificial flavourings remain. Yet, his question highlights concern not for biodiversity loss itself, but merely how it impoverishes his own life. By invoking speakers who exist in disjoint to their lived environments, Lim challenges readers to come into awareness of the world and fully live in the present, to avoid the dystopian future he conjures.
In Human, society is governed by an excessive proliferation of regulations, yet the structured facade of these regulations exposes deep-seated flaws within the system. For example, the persona in “Domestic Bliss” enjoys how he can “wake up to the highest grade of birdsong”. The absurdity of something as mundane as birdsong being subject to classification hints at an overly comprehensive set of regulations and classifications which governs every detail of existence. While these comprehensive classifications are presented by governing bodies as promoting control and order, they instead collectively reveal inherent problems and absurdities within the system. The assertion that “[t]here is a safe amount of dioxin in the water” underscores how the very necessity of regulatory standards reveals a widespread problem with pollution (“Legacy Retold in Luxury”). The irony of any level of poison being deemed “safe” highlights the normalisation of environmental degradation, to the extent that the presence of toxins in such a vital resource as water is accepted. Therefore, Lim highlights how regulations in society need to be interrogated, so as to understand the flaws inherent within its structures.
Lim spells out the consequences of failing to remain critical of the system — a full immersion in it renders people blind to possibilities beyond the bounds of its structures. As Michel Foucault argues, economic theory, which gave rise to capitalism and neoliberalism, is part of the “modern episteme” which “still serves as the positive ground of our knowledge [and constitutes] man’s particular mode of being and the possibility of knowing him empirically”. This aligns with Karl Marx’s assertion that “[i]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” Both theorists emphasise how economic systems mould human consciousness and lived realities. Human demonstrates some of their ideas, highlighting characters whose lives are defined and dictated by the economic system in which they live. In “Parkway”, a lady is described as “hypotenuse to the railing of ageing steel”, literally embedding her within the building’s structure and co-opting her into the system. Lim further demonstrates that such assimilation is not merely material but epistemological as well — people rely on there being “visions of paradise still not in the catalogue”. Crucially, this explicates an inability to imagine futures outside of what neoliberalism curates, where ideals are reduced to commodities. This inability is presented as deep-rooted: even the young “children, with lightbulbs for teeth, mistake / their dreams for money” (“Monster”). Children are typically thought of as figures of untainted innocence, yet they are so steeped in the capitalist system that money is equated to dreams. Hence, in a society that uncritically accepts the structures of capitalism and uses them to understand lived realities, people unwittingly perpetuate its logic, losing sight of all alternative modes of thought.
The complete enmeshment of Singaporeans in neoliberal systems numbs them to their inherent horrors, diminishing them via the language of production and profit. As such, Lim subverts the pastoral tradition of depicting an idealised rural lifestyle in “Singapore Pastoral” by providing this jarring image of death:
An old man drowns, feeding
the reeds, which we will use
to make our rice blue
The man’s death is barely registered as the focus immediately shifts to the production of rice. This underscores how neoliberal systems of production lead to a lack of empathy, because they reduce life to a commodity that can be traded for profit and production. Lim proceeds to highlight the broader consequences of such rigid thinking. In “Notes towards a Discount Revolution”, he writes that “the oceans rose and smothered us with styrofoam boxes”, with the deadpan tone absurd in contrast to the catastrophic consequences. In contrast to this human apathy, nature is portrayed as an agential force capable of emotions, reacting sensitively to the environmental apocalypse. He writes, in “Fly Forgotten, as a Dream (VII)”, that “[t]he land is furrowed deep with worry. The angsana trees are turning orange with pain.” There is a reversal of roles, where humans, typically considered by humanists to be the most capable of sensing and feeling, have become numb to environmental destruction, while nature mourns this and reacts with visceral intensity. Working against our indifference to anything that does not generate profit, Human forces us to confront the neoliberal systems of production which degrade the environment we live in, exhorting us to envision a more sustainable and empathetic future.
In the second half of Human, “the great reset”, Lim offers examples of how this process of re-visioning could be achieved. At the core of posthumanism is a call for us to embrace the “non-human, vital force of Life” as a “transversal force that cuts across and reconnects previously segregated species, categories and domains” (Braidotti). What this entails is moving past an anthropocentric focus on human life, and instead coming to an appreciation of life in all its forms. This appreciation arises from an acknowledgement of “the ties that bind us to the multiple ‘others’ in a vital web of complex interrelations” (Braidotti). Through recognising the innate value of life itself, we can challenge the prioritisation of productivity and profit under neoliberalism by highlighting alternative values that have been hitherto dismissed. Lim features a set of translations of Bai Juyi’s poetry which demonstrates the shift in perspective necessary to better appreciate the world we live in. Deliberate word spacings force readers to slow down their reading pace, taking in each word individually: a contrast from the hectic pace of modern life. Additionally, translating from one culture and time period to another, given the understanding of translation as a dialogical relation, affirms how the entirety of human experience cannot be easily boiled down to a homogenised whole, resisting the homogenising force of capitalism through an appreciation of uniqueness and difference. For instance, in Lim’s translation of “Feeling Sorry about the Peonies”:
The poem emphasises a personal process of relating to the environment — the persona “cherish[es]” and “feel[s] sorry”. Significantly, this ability to empathise stems from the persona’s sympathetic imagination. He imagines how they will be affected by the elements over time, which is what allows him to better appreciate the ephemeral beauty of “the ebbing red”. Thus, slowing down and deeply connecting with the environment are presented as crucial shifts necessary to resist the increasing commodification of human experience. It is these shifts that allow us to broaden our perspective, decentring ourselves and acknowledging the other beings that we share the Earth with. As Lim writes in “New World Symphony”:
This is freedom from tyranny
This is a memory-palace for those
unborn
We retain agency in how we engage with our environment. By exercising this “freedom from tyranny”, we can preserve alternative perspectives, thereby cultivating a “memory-palace” that can resist the homogenising forces of neoliberalism. Lim presents this as our hope — more purposeful engagements with the environment may create a shift in collective consciousness, which could eventually lead to society moving away from pursuing profit and production at all costs and finding more sustainable ways to live.
Conclusion
Lim's oeuvre powerfully critiques contemporary society through the lenses of historical narratives and speculative futures. Through his two collections, Lim challenges readers to re-examine the established narratives that govern their societies and lives. Interrogating the ills of neoliberal capitalism and the rise of authoritarianism, Lim urges readers to confront the consequences of collective forgetting and complacency. Ultimately, his poetry invites us to reflect on the role we ought to play in shaping our society, contributing towards alternative ways of experiencing the world which resist the homogeneity imposed by neoliberalism. Returning to Lim’s assertion that Singapore’s original sin is collective amnesia, though he does not expect us to solve these deep-seated issues immediately, he does invite us to fully engage with our senses and faculties, embracing our lived realities with creativity and sensitivity.
Works cited
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity Press, 2013.
Chua, Beng Huat. “The Business of Living in Singapore.” Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore, edited by Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley, ISEAS Publishing, Singapore, 1989, pp. 1003–1021.
“Death Before Dishonour.” NewspaperSG, National Library Board, 8 Dec. 1991, eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19911208-1.2.56.2.3.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Routledge Classics, 2005.
Gwee, Li Sui, editor. Written Country: The History of Singapore through Literature. Landmark Books, 2016.
Hong, Lysa, and Jianli Huang. The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts. NUS Press, 2008.
Lim, Daryl Wei Jie. “The Original Sin of Singapore’s History.” Quarterly Literary Review Singapore Vol. 12. No. 1. (Jan 2013). Web. 5 Sep 2023.
–––. Anything But Human. Singapore: Landmark Books, 2021.
–––. A Book of Changes. Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2016.
Lim, Jerome. “On Borrowed Time: Mun San Fook Tuck Chee.” The Long and Winding Road, 19 June 2012, thelongnwindingroad.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/on-borrowed-time-mun-sun-fook-tuck-chee/.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester UP, 2004.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Progress Publishers, 1977.
Redmond, Geoffrey. The I Ching (Book of Changes): A Critical Translation of the Ancient Text. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.
