Abstract

Southeast Asian cities like Manila, the Philippines, and Singapore have witnessed economic, political, and cultural changes over the years, especially after periods of colonization. States control their urban fabric—that is, its organization, planning, and design of cities—and thus dictate the flow of capital and forces of labor. Urban poor settlements, an offshoot of capital accumulation, are (re)moved around these cities in accordance with governing visions of development. For populations that are forced into changes brought about by urban development, practices of remembering are also controlled by dominant powers. These “monuments” are established in/as spaces to oblige an image of membership into a society ruled by such powers. Nevertheless, alternate sites of remembering counter these monumental spaces. This paper takes an interest in two novels that feature such places. Liwayway Arceo's Canal de la Reina (1972) and Suchen Christine Lim’s The River’s Song (2013) both figure rivers in Manila and Singapore, respectively. The eponymous river is the central axis of Canal de la Reina, entangled in class conflict and swift urban change in post-Commonwealth Manila. In The River’s Song, the famous Singapore River provides a refuge for reminiscing about Singapore before the city-state’s independence. Comparing these novels to what Filipino comparatist Ruth Jordana Pison calls fictional “counter-memory,” we argue that their rivers remember personal and embodied experiences eliminated from hegemonic accounts of the city. Thus, they function as what we call “counter-monuments” for the urban poor marginalized in the history of the Philippines and Singapore.