Description
The heritage hotel boutique is a multiple space: a place of business, consumption and tourism. It exists as a microcosm of commodity fetishism through exhibition, ‘souvenirisation’ and a knowledge economy. Through visits to Singapore's Raffles Hotel, I show how touristic sites such as the hotel boutique performs as a contact zone between colonial and postcolonial histories. I contextualise the boutique within the twofold process of tourism in Singapore, that is, the ‘touristification’ of history and the historicisation of colonial tourism that coproduces dominant narratives of the nation's racialised past. Within that, I ask what racial capital looks like when appropriated by the postcolonial state, and its conceptual significance. Second, I show how whiteness is reappropriated by the postcolonial state within its ‘touristified’ history, flattened and homogenised through statecraft, and conflated with the wealth, civility and presumed success of the nation. This adopted utility of whiteness in the postcolonial space speaks to hegemonic discourses as dominant yet susceptible to disruption, through the reappropriation of white supremacy for other means, namely reinforcing state-sanctioned narratives.
