ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the poems in the recent poetry anthology A Luxury We Cannot Afford. It focuses on poems that foreground the depiction of Singapore so as to examine the ways in which the poets respond to the pragmatic and logical-positivist approach to things, often associated with Lee Kuan Yew, that have made Singapore into what it is today. The chapter looks at the poetry of contemporary poets Yong Shu Hoong, Toh Hsien Min, and Boey Kim Cheng so as to further explore more developed bodies of writing that represent accumulated ways of engaging with Singapore as a logico-positivist-capitalist complex. The notion of governmentality as formulated by Michel Foucault describes the social, cultural, and political topography with which the poets are engaging. The poem eludes to Cherian George's book Singapore: The Air-conditioned Nation published in 2000, in which the air-conditioner is used as a symbol that represents Singapore.
