ABSTRACT
This paper takes the occasion of Lee’s passing as a touchstone to consider the role of biography in renewed discussions of the place of decolonisation in Singapore’s national narrative. To replace the dominant developmental narrative with which Lee is associated, many historians, both popular and academic, have argued for a proliferation of narratives, of competing Singapore stories, rather than a Singapore story. Yet such acts of storytelling, if they are unreflexive, may simply replace the dominant story with a counter-narrative that changes terms, but remains identical in its construction. Close examination of a contested moment in Singapore’s history suggests an alternative strategy, one to move beyond the binarisms of dominant and alternative narratives: a focus on the image, to focus on the moment before narrative starts.
