On 8 December 2013, the monotonous placidity of Singapore’s streets was disrupted by antisocial violence in a district called Little India. Such acts of mass aggression were unheard of in a country whose policies of multiculturalism have been hailed as exemplary for developed nations. This article examines the conditions and consequences of the riot in Singapore and posits that the event signified a rupture in the politics of multicultural practice. It analyses media representations, official state narratives and vitriolic public responses to consider how the voices of the rioters have been violently silenced. Framed by what Georges Bataille terms the dialectic of civilized speech versus silent violence, where silence is regarded as dispossession and objectification, and vocality as empowerment and subjectivity, this article considers the performativities of silence and violence, and the ways the riot is an event of dissensus, a politics of interruption that fractures hegemonic, state-prescribed narratives of multiculturalism.

There has been increasing use of interactive technologies in the classroom today and a rising popularity of employing virtual environments as a means to engage students in sensorially rich contexts for more embodied forms of experiential learning. In particular, virtual reality (VR) or immersive virtual environments (IVEs) facilitated by head-mounted displays (HMDs) have been used in the teaching of subject content such as history, geography and science. This article presents the findings of an exploratory study of immersive technology, specifically immersive virtual environments (IVES), for the purpose of social and emotional learning (SEL), in the context of Character and Citizenship lessons in the Singapore classroom. The social and emotional competencies (SECs) examined in this project were specifically empathy and perspective-taking, and responsible decision-making. The study involved a sample of n = 75 students from a cohort of students in a Singapore school, averaged at 15 years of age. Students were randomly divided into three treatment conditions: IVEs, pen-and-paper mental simulation and video-viewing. Each treatment contained a problem scenario, told from a first-person perspective, involving a social and ethical dilemma young people today face. A quasi-experimental, pretest post-test, non-equivalent group design was employed, and the study adopted a mixed-method approach to data collection. The findings reveal that IVEs are not necessarily more effective than the "pen-and-paper" and video viewing approaches to teaching SECs but they can better facilitate perspective-taking and empathy for a higher percentage of students.

“Gangnam Style” remains an unparalleled pop phenomenon. The music video’s “universality” inspires questions about attributes that have resulted in such a crosscultural contagion. The visual and musical qualities of the “Gangnam Style” video exemplify conditions of liquid modernity and society’s obsession with speed.

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