Loh Kah Seng’s book tells of two entangled stories – one of the misapplication of modern medicine – and the other of the resilience and resourcefulness of those who suffered from the disease and its terrible consequences.

The author, Loh Kah Seng, has given ILEP permission to reproduce here his blog account of Making and Unmaking the Asylum: Leprosy and Modernity in Singapore and Malaysia, which is to be launched in Kuala Lumpur on 15^th August.

“It is a social history of leprosy and leprosy sufferers in Singapore and Malaysia. It is a story of what has been feared, hidden and nearly forgotten.

But it is also a book which demands that we examine the nature and consequences of our unceasing pursuit of modernity. It calls to attention the discomforting shape of our beliefs in modern science, disease and contagion.

The book started in 2004 with research into the official records on leprosy in Singapore and Malaysia. The documents unravel the operation of a powerful policy of compulsory segregation; those with leprosy were seized by the authorities and detained indefinitely in leprosariums. There was no cure; instead, the inmates were to be socially engineered into “self-respecting” members of “an organised community”. It was chiefly the low-income Chinese men which the policy targeted.

The asylum became a social experiment in “high modernism” while society was to be kept safe from what was erroneously believed to be “a dangerous contagion”.

Life for many reluctant inmates was “living hell”. Some sought escape over the high walls and barbed wires of the leprosariums. Others simply rejected the dreary and alien regimen of institutional life by committing suicide. The treatment, ineffective until after the war, caused physical and emotional pain and trauma, and led many patients to reject it.

But the sufferers also contested the regime of high modernist segregation in dynamic and ingenious ways. This became clear to me when the vantage point of the government embedded in the official records was countered and balanced out by the experiences and voices of the sufferers themselves. I interviewed elderly former patients at Silra Home in Singapore, and Sungei Buloh Hospital, the so-called “Valley of Hope”, in Kuala Lumpur.

Collectively, subtly and in the long run, the inmates became “residents”, where the asylums were “unmade” and became “homes”. Sungei Buloh, Pulau Jerejak and Trafalgar, the three main leprosariums in Singapore and Malaysia, were all reimagined and recreated by the residents themselves. The asylums’ keepers were not unchallenged in projecting the power of high modernism and were unable to prevent the rise of semi-autonomous ways of life in the leprosariums.

The residents insisted on the importance of family, friends, popular culture, and religion in the institution, and on activities which were officially frowned upon, such as forming secret societies, gambling and moonshining. The residents, in short, possessed “the weapons of the weak”.

But, as the book emphasises, the public stigma against leprosy remains, the disease continues to be misunderstood and many cured patients still experience family and social rejection. As they have faced various forms of physical and emotional relocation and dislocation in the past, they are now confronting the reality that their homes will soon be demolished or converted into new uses. The history of leprosy in Singapore and Malaysia is not yet at an end. “

Reproduced from Loh Kah Seng’s blog: http://unmakingtheasylum.wordpress.com/

Contact the author Loh Kah Seng, Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, Singapore: lkshis@gmail.com

Making and Unmaking the Asylum: Leprosy and Modernity in Singapore and Malaysia
SIRD, 2009
ISBN: 9789833782765
Click on link for order form to purchase a copy of this book.

LAUNCH OF MAKING AND UNMAKING THE ASYLUM:
LEPROSY AND MODERNITY IN SINGAPORE AND MALAYSIA 

Date: Saturday 15^th August 2009
Time: 14:00 – 16:40
Venue: The Kuala Lumpur & Sengalor Chinese Assembly Hall Youth Section (KLSCAH-YOUTH), No 1, Jalan Maharajalela, 50150 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This very special event will bring together representatives of the former residents of Valley of Hope in Sungai Buloh – the world’s second largest leprosy settlement that was partially demolished in 2008 despite calls to preserve it as a heritage site – to share their life testimonies and thoughts resulting from state and public stigma against leprosy. The audience will include social activists and friends/family members who shared solidarity with the Valley of Hope.

Programme:
14:00 Arrival of guests
14:40 Screening of Valley of Hope
15:00 Introduction to Making and Unmaking the Asylum and a tale of solidarity by a representative of the Save Valley of Hope Solidarity Group, Teoh Chee Keong
15:15 Book launch by Y B Elizabeth Wong, Selandor State Exco member for Tourism, Consumer Affairs and Environment and discussion session with the author Loh Kah Seng and representative of Valley of Hope, Lee Chor Seng
15:50 Discussion and Q & A
16:20 Tea/chat and book signing
16:40 End

For further details please contact:
Ms Lee Siew Hwa on tel no: 03-7957 8342/8343
Mr Chong Ton Sin on tel no:  016-379 7231 

 

 

Categories: Asia, Book reviews, News and Notes