Smell this: Singapore's curry day and visceral citizenship

摘要

In August 2011, many Singaporean citizens grabbed their cooking pots and used the city-state's national obsession with food to express growing dissatisfaction with immigration and integration trends. The cook and share a pot of curry' eventa local response to Chinese newcomers complaining about the smell of their Indian Singaporean neighbours' foodis significant for its use of smell to catalyse a collective citizen reaction and for its reliance on contemporary social media. By analysing this event, we intend to (1) conceptualize the role of smell and viscera in framing citizenship; (2) understand how smells shed light on the city-state's contemporary ethnic politics and sense of national identity; and (3) reframe the significance of curry day as an expression of visceral citizenship that complements how the state frames Singaporean citizenry. We maintain that curry day sheds light on a specific dimension of Singaporean citizenship, as it uses smell, viscera and embodied activism to mobilize against rationalistic state-defined distinctions between local and international concerns, economic objectives and social cohesion, inter-racial harmony and national identity.