From Illegible to Illicit: Anglophone Singapore Writing from the 1970s to the 1990s

The public is invited to 
From Illegible to Illicit: Anglophone Singapore Writing from the 1970s to the 1990s
by Ann Ang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Part of the KRITIKA KULTURA LECTURE SERIES

To register, visit https://go.ateneo.edu/KKLectureAng.

Kritika Kultura, in collaboration with the Literary and Cultural Studies Program and PLUME, invites you to a lecture titled “From Illegible to Illicit: Anglophone Singapore Writing,” to be delivered by Ann Ang of the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). The event will take place on 18 November 2025, 5:00–7:00 PM, at the NGF Conference Room, De la Costa Hall, Ateneo de Manila University.

This lecture investigates the contested beginnings of Singapore’s anglophone literary scene, focusing on how writers from the 1970s to the 1990s confronted public and political resistance amid shifting policies on language and nationhood. By revisiting this period, the talk reveals how debates on morality, culture, and linguistic identity shaped the path toward a distinctly Singaporean English writing. It concludes by examining Damien Sin’s poetics as a culmination of this contentious relationship between literary expression and state discourse. 

Admission is free and open to the public. Please bring a valid ID for campus access. 

ABSTRACT
While much scholarship on Singapore writing focuses on the late 1990s to the contemporary moment, discussing themes such as migrancy, globalization, minority identity, and its intersections with the city’s state narrative of national survival, this talk explores the decades preceding the emergence of Singapore as a global city. Amidst the expanding study of Commonwealth writing in the 1970s, local anglophone writers in Singapore encountered an unexpected wave of resistance from state and public discourses. Taking as its starting point a parliamentary speech that labelled anglophone poets as “the arty-crafty dodgers of reality,” anglophone writers were perceived as immoral, contrarian, and uncommitted to the nation. Though the state advocated a policy of official bilingualism where English is taught as the first language, accompanied by an ethnic mother tongue, local writers were caught between cultural decolonization and the developmentalist role of standard English alongside the British literary canon. By the 1990s, however, English was increasingly the literary language of choice. But popular readership supported, instead, a burgeoning genre writing scene focusing on ghost stories and horror. The second half of the talk examines Damien Sin—musician, poet, and noir writer—as emblematic of an anglophone illicitness that can be traced to earlier decades. His poetry collection Saints, Sinners and Singaporeans (1998) blends high culture elements such as the ballad form and rhyme schemes with a startling mix of subjects ranging from the devil and sex to working class anthems and Nero.

BIONOTE
Dr. Ann Ang is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). Her current research interests include comparative methods for anglophone Southeast Asian literatures, Singapore and Malaysian poetry, and ecocritical approaches to regional writing. Dr. Ang’s work is published in Kritika Kultura, the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Interventions, and Modernism/Modernity. She is also a writer of poetry and fiction, and has edited several literary anthologies.

ABOUT KRITIKA KULTURA
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