A Land Imagined: Transsensorial States of Transmigration

• 발행기관: 건국대학교 모빌리티인문학 연구원, 건국대학교 아시아·디아스포라 연구소
• 저자명: Jiaying Sim
• 간행물 정보: 『International Journal of Diaspora&Cultural Criticism』Vol.10 No.1, 37~67쪽, 전체 31쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 기타인문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2020.01.30

영문 초록

This paper argues that in Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua’s feature film, A Land Imagined (2019), liminal states of in-betweenness and blurred subjectivities in the film embody and uncover the precarious positions that transnational migrant workers occupy in Singapore. I posit that the only way to “find” the missing construction worker from China who disappears suddenly from a land reclamation site early in the film is to traverse and transgress spaces as defined by physical, national, psychological, real and/or technological boundaries. It is only through the act of tracing and attending to transsensorial states of trance presented in and produced within and without the film can the disembodied “ghost” of the missing migrant worker be returned to his body and hence the materiality of the film. The audience is compelled to ethically examine the strong presence of transmigrant labour that is forced to pass as invisible or absent in nation-state Singapore.

목차

1. Introduction: Deconstructing an opening scene of Construction

2. Migrant Workers in the Field of Mobility Studies

3. Setting some context: Singapore and its Construction Industry

4. Transmigrant Figures

5. The Missing Migrant Worker: Transsensorial Assemblages of Bodies

6. Beyond Identity Politics: Split-screen Subjectivities

7. Conclusion

References

키워드

Transsensorial Transnational migration Trance Transmigrant Affect