Disabling Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore story: the problematic logics of inclusion in contemporary Singapore

Representations of Lee since his passing have focused on discussing the role that he played in building Singapore and the politics of remembering him. This article takes a different approach, underpinned by developments towards the incorporation of disabled people in life both in Singapore and internationally. Embracing disability as a valid form of embodiment as well as an important source of critical knowledge, this article uses a disability analytic to disable both the figure of Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore Story. It does so to expose the underpinning logics and contradictions surrounding disability, which affords opportunities to reimagine a more inclusive Singapore

Review of The Journey to Inclusion by Xuan Thuy Nguyen

No abstract available

The Biopolitics of Inclusion: Disability and Capacity in the Singapore Nation

The inclusion of disabled people in Singapore has gained speed and publicity since the mid 2000s, as the state sought to build a more inclusive society. This has been manifested in various cultural texts, from carnivals like the Purple Parade, inclusive community spaces such as the Enabling Village, politicians reaffirming the need to build a more inclusive society, and public education campaigns such as See the True Me. In my work, I examine this biopolitics of inclusion through a reading of these texts, and analyze its underpinning logics and implications on our understanding of disability both in Singapore and transnationally. I argue that increasingly in Singapore, and in other nation-states, the effect of inclusion is the production of a new figure of disability, or what I call the included. In this work, I sketch out the contours of the included, who are actively embraced by a state that demands inclusion of all it deems disabled, speaking with disability studies that has focused on exposing the exclusion of disabled people. In exposing the logics in which the figure of the included works, I argue that only those bodies that can be capacitated are included within mainstream society. In other words, it is through capacity that disability can be folded into life

Beyond the Business Case: Different Models of Including People with Disabilities at Work

When not done properly, policies or interventions that claim to be 'inclusive' can be patronizing or even oppressive. Through interviews and focus groups with employers, service providers and the disability community in Singapore, we helped to articulate what counts as ideal or sensible inclusion of people with disabilities at work. Against those that might seek to mainstream disability wherever it exists, our findings suggest that enclaved spaces for work serve an important function despite charges of being exclusionary. Some enclaves operate as 'work villages' that provide a protected, familiar space to accommodate unique needs while others serve as 'diversity incubators' that provide scalable lessons for more mainstream contexts. Within the Singapore context, policymakers largely operate within a 'business case' paradigm that focuses on incentivizing employers and an 'industrial model' of vocational assessment and job placement. While this has a role to play, we demonstrate the importance of attending to the neglected 'moral case' for hiring people with disabilities