Neoliberal recontextualizations and legitimations in a post‐Confucian state

Abstract

While neoliberal ethos has seen a consistent spread and reterritorialization beyond its Anglo-American roots, the specific inflections of neoliberalism and its discourse have had to be recontextualized to fit with context-specific values and structures of government/governance. Adopting a critical discourse-analytic approach, this paper looks at the case of Singapore to probe the discursive moves and tropes deployed to communicate and legitimate a neoliberal-oriented, authoritarian governance in a wealthy society marked by a high level of inequality. It shows how Singapore's 'Asian' sociopolitical context and its post-Confucian heritage are amenable to a strategic discursive melding of a more conventional self-interested, neoliberal individualism with a more locally-situated traditionalist collective/communitarian ethos, with the latter functioning as a discursive-moralizing trope to encourage acquiescence to a market-fundamentalist agenda for 'the greater/common good' .

Affective governance as multimodal discursive practice in Singapore’ COVID-19 vaccination video

“…To win more support, the government has inclined to either present itself as more 'human', 'relatable and empathetic' to appeal to the citizens or affectively engage them for policy support (Yang, 2014a(Yang, , 2014bYoshimizu, 2014). Thus, affect has become an important tool in political communication and persuasion in the Singapore government's rhetoric (Ng, 2019(Ng, , 2020Teo, 2021). By mobilizing certain emotions, social relations, experiences, and lifestyles, the government can obtain support and create affinity with the citizens for political purposes and thus generate public support (Mulderrig, 2018).…”