the singapore river as a psychogeographical faultline

I acquired a copy of Stephen Dobbs' "The Singapore River: A Social History 1819-2002" because I saw a quote about the Singapore River as a Dead Snake in a recent seminar (which I was sadly unable to attend). The quote is credited to Ow Chin Seng, treasurer of the Lighter Owners Association (1993) - who gave a lengthy interview about the Singapore River in 1993. This was a sentiment echoed by letters to the Straits Times that the removal of the lighterage industry (which had been rendered redundant by the work of the PSA) had subsequently rendered the river as "soulless"...

Spanning over 80 years of history, Dobbs focuses the bulk of his study on the life of lighters workers working directly on and along the river (including their migration patterns). I had not known that the jetties had been separated by dialects, and the book provides a sensitive study of riverside life (family life? vice? opium? new years? all in!).

The last three chapters are dedicated to the modern "post-clean-up" River, and this is where it gets a lot more ambivalent. One might go so far as to describe it as "speculative"? If a thing no longer looks the same, does it still have the same meaning? In any case, the current shape of the river is now actually nothing like the original shape of the river...



Andre de La Varre's Crossroads of the East 1938
"The Chinese believe their boats must see where they are going,
hence they are painted with huge eyes..."