UWC2101D: Selves and Cities

Reflecting on "What is Authenticity?"

By Tang Weng Hong

I wrote in my essay that Gibson's article made me feel "indignant and defensive" but my actual and initial reaction, upon reading the article, was one of immense incredulity and irritation. Firstly, Gibson's views about Singapore seem to me to be unsubstantiated and totally skewed, to the point of exaggeration and caricature. Secondly, he seems to have written the article based on what little he has read or heard about Singapore. He did come to Singapore for a brief stay but whatever perception he formed of Singapore during his brief stay seemed to have been distorted by his own bias and pre-conceptions.

My feelings of incredulity, irritation and indignation prompted me to write the particular essay I have written. It is actually easy to start writing when you are passionate about a particular subject or at least, have something to say about it. Hence, I did not take a long time to churn out the first draft.

But of course, the first draft was far from good. One problem that I faced was: what is authenticity? I found out that my own understanding of authenticity was vague. Even in my final draft, I did not really manage to give a concise definition of authenticity. But I did not think that was a serious problem, so long as there was some evidence in my essay that I have tussled with the concept of authenticity. The reason is that authenticity is too broad and deep a concept to be limited by any concise definition. Eventually, I decided that Koolhaas' own notion of authenticity is simply too restrictive. As I have written, "it does not make sense to restrict the authenticity of a country to just mean the authenticity of the buildings in the country", which is what Koolhaas seems to have done!

A second problem that I faced in my earlier drafts was that I seemed to have conceded too much ground to Koolhaas and Gibson in my discussion about the Chinatown revitalization programme and the Merlion as the national icon of Singapore. But I think that the problem was solved once I got a clearer picture of what authenticity is. In a narrow sense of authenticity, there seems to be a grain of truth in the articles by Koolhaas and Gibson (I acknowledged this in the essay), as shown in my discussion about Chinatown and about the Merlion. In a wider sense of authenticity, however, it seems that Singapore is indeed authentic, as I have tried to argue in the last few paragraphs of the essay.

There are a few things in the final draft of my essay which I am still not very satisfied about, now that I have just re-read it. One of these things is the concept of authenticity, on which the whole argument in my essay hinges. Although I do not think that it is possible or even desirable to come out with a concise definition of the concept, I do think that the essay could have been better if there were more examples to illustrate ostensively, what authenticity really is.