Between the Dead Body and the Body Politic: Compulsory Exhumation in Singapore

To appropriately bury the dead is one of the most shared of human desires and, in multiple contexts throughout the world, the fact that the dead are not appropriately buried remains a source of political tension. Within anthropology of late, many scholars have focused on the corpse as a potent political symbol. More broadly, death is classic area of anthropological interest with a host of texts marking pivotal moments in the discipline’s theoretical trajectory. However, in early works, death is entirely unpoliticized and treated as a neutral “natural” phenomenon.  Meanwhile, within the newer literature, scholars have addressed the political manipulation of dead bodies exclusively in contexts of violent regime change. Yet, even stable states make the manipulation of dead bodies a key strategy of governance. Without attention to this mechanism, we are left with an incomplete analysis of the quotidian strategies of political power and the ways that avowedly secular states attempt to mold their citizens’ religious beliefs.    In this round-table discussion, I discuss the political manipulation of death in Singapore, a place where the state has ordered the destruction of every cemetery but one. In any context, to exhume the bodies of kin would likely horrify, but it is doubly horrifying for Chinese Singaporeans who believe that their fortune and health stem from the fact that the dead are appropriately buried. I argue that, in contrast to previous assumptions, mortuary ritual is highly politicized and must be returned to the center of scholarly focus if we are to truly understand the subtle operation of political power and what it means to live through a period of massive and forced religious change. As a whole, my discussion elucidates how the religious and the political intersect by offering a new analysis of the connection between the dead body and the body-politic.