ABSTRACT
Hitherto, classroom research on racial injustice in Literature education has largely focused on Western contexts. With a multiracial yet ethnic Chinese majority population, literary discussions on race in Singapore classrooms with local texts present an opportunity to extend research to non-Western contexts. Like other East Asian nations, race in Singapore is distinctly governed by three characteristics: the state’s strong managerial role, connections of race with communitarian values of harmony, how notions of privilege are informed by specific linguistic and cultural histories. Yet public discourse on race has grown recently, partly owing to social media activism. In this case study, we examine how two classes of Singapore secondary 4 (Grade 10) students critically and ethically negotiate invitations to racial discourse in a co-designed Literature unit examining race and identity within a larger research project. Drawing on Derek Attridge and Suzanne Choo’s ethics of responsible readings and pedagogical interruptions respectively, we observe four student critical-ethical strategies of interruption: interpretive interruptions resisting state narratives of race; authoritative interruptions questioning state actors’ authoritative interpretations of race; empathetic interruptions challenging other students’ resistance to antiracism by promoting empathetic perspective-taking; and linguistic interruptions of one’s own racial and linguistic privilege to account for minority perspectives.
