Introduction: Worlds Built of Sand

Opening with a discussion of Singaporean artist Charles Lim Yi Yong’s multiyear art project SEASTATE (2005–), this introduction uses Singapore’s recent land reclamation efforts to reflect on more general processes of world building in Sinophone Southeast Asia. More specifcally, the essay considers how multiple waves of migration from China to Southeast Asia have resulted in a wide array of Chinese communities throughout the region, and how modern literature may be used as a prism through which to examine some of the sociocultural formations that have been generated by these waves of migration from China throughout Southeast Asia. The essay considers how literature reflects the region’s diverse array of Sinitic communities, or “worlds,” and how literary production may be viewed as a process of world making in its own right. Although this special issue covers considerable territory (both literally and metaphorically), our objective is not to offer a comprehensive survey of all modern literary production from the entire region. Instead, we seek to showcase a set of novel approaches that may be used to examine the region’s eclectic body of literary production, including approaches grounded in concepts of mesology, postloyalism, interimperiality, oceanic epistemologies, offcenter articulations, and the condition of being “semiwild.”

Duke Scholars

Author Carlos Rojas Asian & Middle Eastern Studies