I wish I could say the 99th page of my dissertation was somehow at least partially
illuminating about what I tried to say with my doctoral research, but alas. The 99th page
contains some of the analysis I conducted in my third chapter, but is only briefly indicative of
the overall argument. The project is concerned with what I have observed as a burgeoning,
resurgent form of religion-based homophobia in Singapore. This neo-homophobia is conjured
through the Christian idea of metanoia, which encourages followers to aspire towards
spiritual transformation. Think of it as a change of mind, but spiritual. The idea is to always
be in service of the faith.

By looking at multimodal, narrative, and metapragmatic discourses, I consider how language
works as a mode of correction for queer individuals. It conveys logics of change and
transformation through varied discourses that prescribe the same goal: to turn away from
queerness and towards the normative (whatever form that might take). Most of my data
comes from these video testimonials produced by a non-denominational Christian
organization in Singapore, which are not only multimodal in production, but also narratively
structured in the way the stories are told. I also conducted interviews with queer individuals
in Singapore who used to or still identify with a religion, which form the metapragmatic talk
that I analyze for instances of truth-telling – a very Foucauldian approach to looking at my
data.

Writing the dissertation has been sobering, not just in terms of my development as a scholar
but also as someone who is gay but not Christian. The timelessness of queer animus is
located in its reinvention, and linguistic anthropology has given me a way to make sense of it.
I now am – and we should all be – more suspicious of any calls for change and
transformation: what do we leave behind, and where are we headed?

Pak, Vincent. 2023. “Homecoming: Discursive Metanoia as Homophobia.” Ph.D Diss.,
Singapore and London: National University of Singapore and King’s College London.