Episode 1384: Research Spring Cleaning

Eliminated another bunch of readings that I've deemed to be not useful. Along the way, I spotted a couple of articles that I realised I'd forgotten about, but which will actually be useful in helping to clarify the theoretical aspects of my dissertation. I may need to rethink the planned order of my chapters, as I think my original approach would have seen me writing a first chapter that would struggle to avoid being just a rehash of the debates regarding tourism versus identity in relation to the Merlion. Now I'm thinking that maybe once I've laid the theoretical groundwork in my introduction, I should launch straight into my analysis of the first half of the anthology, and work the tourism stuff in there, since that's what a couple of the earlier poems take aim at. My middle chapter would then be about the second half of the anthology, but then I'm not sure where that would leave the final chapter. I don't want to move the stuff about the Merlion and liminality out of the conclusion, since I think that's where it belongs, as a representation of an alternative mode of engagement with or way of thinking about the Merlion. Unless instead of focusing only on the tourism aspect in my first chapter, I make the chapter into something about the symbiotic relationship of icons and cities, with tourism being just one facet of that. That's kind of been the one idea that I haven't been able to incorporate properly in all my planning so far, but I think Lindsey's pointing me in the direction of Liverpool's Super Lambanana was actually more useful than I initially realised.