Song of a Reformed Headhunter

A fascinating attempt to meld psychoanalytic and Marxist analyses, which yields many insights and much hope. While holding fast to Freud's idea that civilization is the result of the repression of the pleasure principle in favor of the reality principle, Marcuse argues for his own idea of a surplus repression, which is the result of historically determined social domination due to scarcity. As technology creates abundance, such domination becomes increasingly irrational, opening the way for the reduction of surplus repression and even biological repression. In short, we will work less and play more. As civilization matures in the era of abundance, sexuality will be transformed into Eros, which will diffuse the pleasure principle into all aspects of life, including work. Right now, we don't have abundance, but we do have aesthetics ("the science of sensuousness") and archetypes such as Orpheus and Narcissus to provide an image of what can and will be. From Herman Hesse...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . We are very pleased to announce the results of the 7th Singapore Poetry Contest. In conjunction with our Gaudy Boy launch of Monique Truong’s delicious novel The Sweetest Fruits now out in Singapore and Malaysia , this year’s contest had the novel’s title for its theme. Open to everyone, the contest was judged by Singapore Literature Prize winner, Marylyn Tan. Winners receive a cash prize, publication, and a signed copy of The Sweetest Fruits if they live in Singapore and Malaysia. We received a total of 157 poems. The entries came from 14 countries around the world. Singapore leads with 71 entries, followed by Nigeria 16, the US 16, the Philippines 15, India 10, the UK 9, South Korea 4, the UAE 4, Canada 3, Malaysia 3, the Netherlands 2, Spain 1, Switzerland 1, Taiwan 1, and 1 with no address. Because of the high quality of the entries, our judge decided to award two Honorable Mentions for exempla...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Every Friday I receive in my email inbox a Shabbat reading list from Jewish Currents , "a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left." Last Friday, the reading list consisted of articles and links about the crisis unfolding in Palestine/Israel. I found one recommended online event organized by The Middle East Institute and Project48 to be particularly informative. For an instance, I had the misconception that the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland was a result of the wars between Israel and the Arab states. In the video, the historian Rashid Khalidi corrected that error. 300,000 Palestinains were expelled before the wars, and were followed by another 450,000 Palestinians after the wars began. The 9.1 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons is the largest in the world, and the displacement is still going o...

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States delivers as promised. A passionate and compelling account of American history from the point of view of its peoples: the indigenous and not the invaders, the enslaved and not the slavers, the working class and not the governing class, the minorities and not the majorities. Without glossing over the fractures, contradictions, and limitations of mass movements, yet Zinn offers a glimpse of their power and achievements. America has always had its radicals, much as it has always had its oppressors. I will be returning to this book again and again for its understanding, compassion, and outrage. Ryan Grim's We've Got People is an exciting journalistic account of the rise of the American progressive movement from Jesse Jackson in the 1980's to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 2010's. In Grim's account, Rahm Emanuel emerges as the arch-villain who led the Democrats astray by taking money from big corporations in ...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . I've been a subscription member of New Naratif since its founding. New Naratif is much more than a journalism outlet, it is a movement for democracy in Southeast East Asia. Its long-form reports amplify the voices and actions of activists and minorities across the region. Its events and podcasts raise awareness and connect people. Its calls for action are thoughtful and practical. You may already be a supporter of your own country's independent media. (If you are not, please be one!) Now you can also support a transnational movement working for human rights, workers' rights, and minorities' rights. New Naratif's latest article "Across Southeast Asia, Human Rights Defenders Unite Against Myanmar Coup," exemplifies its mission. In confronting the rise of authoritarianism and violence in the region, we need greater unity and understanding among us. If you belong to a coun...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Until I moved to the US, I had not thought of myself as Asian. I had thought of myself as Singaporean in nationality, Chinese in race, and Hainanese in ethnicity, but not Asian in any way. At a diversity training session at my private school on the Upper East Side, I gave Chinese for my race, but was told that, no, I was Asian. To be Asian will forever include an element of imposition, a compound of artificiality. But don't all identities—national, racial, or gender, or what have you—include the same element and compound? I had no say in being born in Singapore. My instincts have always led me to do the best with what I have been given. In school I have bonded with my students, Asian and otherwise, over reading Asian authors, though not exclusively. One of my most memorable classes resulted from our study of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's...

  Last night's event "It's white supremacy, not sex addiction, stupid!" was informative and inspiring. As we remembered the eight victims of the March massacre in and around Atlanta, six of whom were Asian women, the readers also reminded us, in eloquent prose and poetry, of the long history of racism, sexism, and imperialism in the US. Thank you, Jerrine Tan, Paula Mendoza, Celina Su, Devi S. Laskar, and Pauline Park, for speaking to and with us. A big thanks too to our co-organizer, the Evergreen Review. Singapore Unbound is donating all revenue from the sale of Gaudy Boy books from March to May to MinKwon Center for Community Action, a non-profit based in Flushing, Queens, which advocates for low-income tenants, turns out the vote, and provides social services in Korean and Chinese. Please check out our books: https://singaporeunbound.org/gaudyboy To read new work by Celina Su and Devi S. Laskar, go to: https://evergreenreview.com/

Chin was an old army mate, whom I met again years later and oceans away, in NYC, in the home of common friends. We had to see one another again, of course, and find out what has transpired, as much for the window into another life as for the mirror held up to our own. We had a most engaging conversation, after which Chin approved of the poem "The Philosopher" that I wrote for him. It's a part of a working series of poems about Singaporeans in America. Here's the poem , two years later, in the midst of a pandemic, published by Creative Flight, an international open-access peer-reviewed e-journal in English. Thanks, Dipak Giri, for publishing it.