History's Malcontents: The life and times of S. Raoul

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'History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul’ is part biography, part reconstruction of the life and times of the erstwhile scientist, theorist, archaeologist and scapegoat S. Raoul, by his protégé and eventual biographer Shubigi Rao. It concentrates on S. Raoul’s work of the last ten years of his life, and is an attempt to capture the measure of the disregarded man though his work and letters.

The book includes excerpts of S. Raoul’s pseudo-scientific theories, from an archaeological reconstruction of Singapore after its extinction based on a study of its potsherds, to his neuro-scientific study of the deranging effects of art, and a previously unknown work - the creation of the immortal jellyfish, the Turritopsis nutricula. The book also contains excerpts from S. Raoul’s private journals, notebooks and letters, and thus captures his opinionated but very lucid views on subjects as diverse as art, archaeology, and the nature of biography to hybridity and the human yearning for immortality. Lavishly illustrated in full-colour throughout, this book also contains appendices and monographs that explore the peculiar world of S. Raoul.

S. Raoul acted as if the world needed obscure scholarship, freed from economic and nationalist imperatives, liberated from any agenda save that of furthering said scholarship, a form of quiet activism that has numerous historical precedents and antecedents. S. Raoul was also mentor and patron of sorts to the younger Rao, who eventually became his biographer. He was much enamoured of her work as he felt sympathy with her more reactionary but ultimately futile politics, and even collected her River of Ink books. It was also what killed him.

This publication coincided with 'The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul, by Shubigi Rao,' an exhibition chronicling 10 years of the labour of S. Raoul, polymathic researcher, archaeologist, inventor and recluse. Organized by Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore at Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore, March 2013

This 108-page full-colour publication also includes writing by Dr. Charles Merewether, former Director of ICAS, and June Yap, independent curator.