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Chronotopes of ‘Chinese’ privilege: Class-inflected racialisation in condominium hoardings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2022

Michelle M. Lazar Open the ORCID record for Michelle M. Lazar [Opens in a new window]
Michelle M. Lazar*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore, Singapore
*
Address for correspondence: Michelle M. Lazar National University of Singapore Department of English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies Block AS5, 7 Arts Link, Singapore117570[email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores racial ‘privilege’ through the lens of temporalized landscapes. Specifically, I examine chronotopes of class-inflected ‘Chinese’ privilege on advertising hoardings for ‘Jadescape’, a condominium development in multiracial Singapore. Two chronotopic dimensions are discussed. The first, pertaining to representations inscribed on the hoardings, manifest a ‘chronotopic bricolage’, involving the fusion of a ‘traditional racial-cultural chronotope’ of a historicised ‘Chineseness’, and a ‘modern cosmopolitan chronotope’ of contemporariness and transnationalism. Embedded in this mix are further multiplicities of time, which altogether create a Sinocentric ‘neo-traditional’ aesthetic. The second dimension relates to the impermanence of the semiotic-materiality of the hoardings installed along the perimeter of the construction site only while the condominium is being built. The temporariness of hyper-visible representability of ‘Chineseness’, read against other similar media and communication practices in multiracial public spaces, secures a ‘semiotic-material immunity of privilege’, which renders racialized Chinese privilege in Singapore both elusive and normalised. (Chronotopes of privilege, ‘Chinese privilege’, ‘chronotopic bricolage’, neo-traditional aesthetic, condominium advertising, critical semiotic landscape studies)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 51 , Special Issue 5: Semiotic Timescapes , November 2022 , pp. 839 - 859
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

Thanks to my Research Assistant, Wesley Wang, for his wonderful assistance on this project.

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