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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2020
This article exemplifies a mode of analysis in which the novel is read as a practice of self-making under decolonization. The argument is illustrated through attention to Lee Kok Liang’s novel London Does Not Belong to Me. Written describing Lee’s experiences as a Malayan law student in London in the 1950s, the novel was published posthumously in Malaysia fifty years later. Comparison of the published text with Lee’s journal of his student days enables a careful study of the process of the novelization of the self as an example of larger processes of subjectification through authorship in the process of decolonization, and in the creation of elite citizen-subjects in the nation-state of Malaya and its successor states of Malaysia and Singapore.
2. Lee’s journal is preserved as two separate incomplete typescripts in the Syd Harrex Collection, Flinders University Library Special Collections. The typescripts are catalogued as 1952 Journal 1, and 1952 Journal 2, respectively, and neither appears to be the original typescript Lee presented to Harrex. Given possible confusion, I have not given page numbers in references, but I have used Journal 1 as my copy text, and supplemented it with Journal 2 for the final section, which is missing from Journal 1.
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61. Lee, London Does Not Belong to Me, 43.
62. Lee, London Does Not Belong to Me, 12.
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76. Bruner, “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” 20.
77. Lee, London Does Not Belong to Me, 286.
78. The phrase is drawn from Lee’s speech at his press conference on August 9, 1965, announcing Singapore’s separation from Malaysia. See Lee Kuan Yew, “Transcript of a Press Conference by the Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, at the Broadcasting House, Singapore, at 12.00 p.m. on Monday, August, 9, 1965,” NAS (https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19650809b.pdf).
79. Lee Kuan Yew, “Transcript of Speech Made by the Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, at Queenstown Community Centre on 10th August, 1966,” NAS (http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19660810.pdf).
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