Today, oral histories of everyday Singaporeans are more widely circulated in the nation’s mediascape than ever before. At first glance, storytelling in Singapore appears to have lost its monolithic quality, becoming diffuse and diversified. Cheng’s research charts Singapore’s development into a storytelling state over the last decade, where the embodied performances of stories are systematically deployed as a new mode of governance. Bite-sized pieces of consumable lives are marketed as authentic windows to the private self, producing ways of being, doing and feeling. What does it mean to ‘have a life’ when the national mise-en-scène seems to be life itself?
