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There is little that connects the Chinese Communist Party, British Conservative Party, Kenyan leadership, Silicon Valley right-wing, and elites in post-Soviet states. But they all exhibit an acute fascination with founding Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, invoking select strands of his political thought and practice to legitimate their own political projects or imaginaries. Yet, while interest in Lee outside of Singapore is consistently growing, within Singaporean society there is a growing sense of exhaustion and indifference in appealing to his figure – especially when it is perceived as a cynical means to derive political profit for his long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). Using this observation as a launching pad, this lecture explores the contradictions of Lee’s legacy and develops rudiments to pursue a global history of Lee Kuan Yew, bringing his international reception and footprints within a single frame. This entails treating Lee as a global figure of world-historical importance, situating his political thought, movements, and interventions within global trends and networks. While this global approach magnifies Lee’s stature, it also amplifies the less comfortable aspects of his legacy: his “original sin” is no longer the detention without trial, but his role in legitimizing the bloody Vietnam War. A global history of Lee thereby presents intensified contradictions to grapple with.

Quah Say Jye is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. He is a political theorist of postcolonial modernity, with a focus on Southeast Asia. His writing is forthcoming or can be found at the American Journal of Political Science, Review of International Studies, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Critical Asian Studies, International Affairs, and Perspectives on Politics. For more, see https://quahsayjye.wordpress.com/about/.

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