In At the Pivot of East and West, Michael M. J. Fischer examines documentary filmmaking and literature from Southeast Asia and Singapore for their para-ethnographic insights into politics, culture, and aesthetics. Women novelists—Lydia Kwa, Laksmi Pamuntjak, Sandi Tan, Jing Jing Lee, and Danielle Lim—renarrate Southeast Asian generational and political worlds as gendered psychodramas, while filmmakers Tan Pin Pin and Daniel Hui use film to probe into what can better be seen beyond textual worlds. Other writers like Daren Goh, Kevin Martens Wong, and Nuraliah Norasid reinvent the detective story for the age of artificial intelligence, use monsters to reimagine the Southeast Asian archipelago, and critique racism and the erasure of ethnic cultural histories. Continuing his project of applying anthropological thinking to the creative arts, Fischer exemplifies how art and fiction trace the ways in which taken-for-granted common sense changes over time, speak to the transnational present, and track signals of the future before they surface in public awareness.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Reader’s Guide and Manifesto 1
1. Oiled Hinges: Sounds and Silences in Documentary Films of Social Change 47
2. Filmic Stutter, Taped Counter-Truths, and Musical Sutures: Knots of Recovery 76
3. White Ink, Family Systems, Forests of Illusion, and Aging: Knots of Passion 111
4. Miniatures: Small Kindnesses across Poisonous Knowledges 141
5. Blue Widow with Green Stripes: Pivots in Widening Horizons 155
6. Filmic Obsessive Repetitions, Dissociations, and Power Relations 194
7. Meritocracy Blues, Chimeras, and Analytic Monsters 212
Afterword. Portals to the Future: MRT Stations, Universities, and the Peopling of Technologies 243
Exergue. Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Historical Hinge in Australia 257
Notes 269
References 313
Index 337
