Calibrated structures of feeling: Cultural citizenship and the reproduction of the military in Singapore

This article discusses the nexus between Raymond Williams’ structure of feelings and the reproduction of military masculinity as cultural citizenship. By placing the gaze upon National Service in the Singapore Armed Forces as a rite of passage into manhood, this work uses representations of the military in popular culture and souvenirs/ephemera to elucidate how structures of feeling are calibrated as masculinity the state wants its citizenry to internalize. These render military masculinity emergent for Singaporean male bodies. With the male body functioning as an important edifice of the military, emotions toward military service are the connective tissue between enactments of the soldier’s body and the country’s social structures. With feelings of security contouring the cultural dimensions of male citizenship, this work historicizes the illiberal state’s visualization of its sanitized ‘figure’ of the conscript to control how the military is reproduced and felt as the masculinist ‘given’.