FACE OFF |
A Reformasi Diary by Sabri Zain |
Strangers Within the
(Imagined)
Community![]() A Study of Modern Malay Identity in U-Wei Hj Shaari's Jogho and Sabri Zain's Face Off by Khoo Gaik Cheng by Khoo Boo Teik Publication: Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs Author: Dr Khoo Gaik Cheng Publication Date: 2002 Introduction
My
main purpose in this article is to contest
the common discursive idea that modernity, individualism and
urbanisation
connote a loss of traditional values of community rooted in the Malay
village
or kampung. The idyll of the kampung as a place of
communal
cooperation, harmony, and other positive traditional values tends to go
unchallenged by the average Malaysian and has always been a dominant
theme in
Malaysian cultural representations. In fact, Malaysian films and
literature of
the 1970s and 80s, even the 1993 film Balada (Ballad),
continued to
portray the city as a place of corrupt values and greed which has to be
abandoned in favour of a return to the moral purity and ties to
tradition that
are preserved in the kampung. Films such as these suggest that
modern
urban Malay identity is heavily vested in the notion of the kampung
as a
bastion of tradition and positive communal values. However, some
writers and
filmmakers of the 1990s have made significant departures from this
notion. This
is not to say that attitudes towards the kampung have changed
completely
over time and that the positive discourse of the ‘kampung as
community’
no longer circulates. I suggest, however, that an alternative viewpoint
that
challenges such a discourse has emerged since the mid-1990s.I would like
to do two
things. First, I want to show how some new Malaysian film and
literature
challenge the discourse that idealises the notion of Malay community
and
highlight the negative aspects of kampung life. In the texts I
examine,
the kampung is portrayed as a locus of homophobia, misogyny and
intolerance of outsiders. My second aim is to look at the
representations in
these texts of other forms of community outside or beyond the
discursive,
imaginary kampung. These alternative communities emerge in a
variety of
social contexts, and are not necessarily ethnically homogeneous, such
as is the
case with representations of the stereotypical kampung
community. The
documentary-like nature of texts like Bukak Api and Face-Off:
A
Malaysian Reformasi Diary leads me to move from the study of
discursive
representations themselves to a discussion of the social context in
which the
texts are embedded and which they are mediating in their depictions.
Such
representations of alternative multiethnic communities disrupt the
assumption
that the small Malay kampung community is a metonym for
Benedict
Anderson’s larger concept of imagined community or multiethnic nation.
In
social practice, the concept of ‘the nation’ and national identity is
fraught
with contradictory meanings that Malays and non-Malays of various
political and
class positions are constantly contesting. I find that these
texts
reflect this tension. I suggest also that the city, where villagers
flee in
order to escape from the social control and conformity of the kampung,
may have its own forms of social control and surveillance, exerted by
the state
and religious authorities. In the second section of my essay, I employ
Michel
de Certeau’s theory of spatialised subjectivity because it provides a
refreshing way of thinking about, challenging and subverting these
forms of
surveillance and control, ultimately making the city the more
liberatory
idealised space that modern urban living promises. My discussion
takes as its starting point Joel
S. Kahn’s essay ‘Subalternity and the Construction of Malay Identity’
(Kahn
1994). Here Kahn argues that the discursive formation of Malay cultural
identity was constructed for the consumption and identification of the
Malay
middle classes by the political elite and the Malay intelligentsia. This discursive construct was very much
motivated by the consequences of the National Economic Policy
(1971-1990),
together with urban and industrial development. According to Kahn, the
Malay-language rural novels of literary laureate Shahnon Ahmad, the
tourist
industry, domestic leisure and entertainment industries, as well as
architecture and urban planning reconstituted and reified the idea of
Malay
cultural identity as embedded in the kampung. Such an
investment of
Malay cultural identity in images of the traditional kampung
might have
seemed contradictory to the modernist vision and modernising
imperatives of
Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Nevertheless, it was actually a
politically prudent position to support such a national cultural
project in
order not to alienate the traditional (rural) Malay voters of UMNO
(United
Malay Nationalist Organisation). Kahn
sufficiently problematises any simplistic understandings of who the new
Malay
middle class might be: ‘The new Malay middle class cannot in general be
defined
by a capitalist logic’ (Kahn 1994, 38). He adds that most of them are
government employees, yet are neither a uniform nor homogeneous group.
Kahn and
anthropologist Maila Stivens elsewhere have posited that the plural
term
‘middle classes’ better suits a description of the new Malay
bourgeoisie. For
the purposes of this essay, I posit too that one of the factors that
merit the
use of this plural term is the language distinction. The new Malay
middle
classes consist of the Malay-language elite and the English-language
elite (not
to mention those who are bilingual). However, given the affirmative
action
policies of the NEP towards Malays and its encouragement of migration
from kampung
to urban areas, this new wave of Malay middle classes ‘appears to be
firmly
urban-based and urban-oriented’ (Kahn 1994, 39). Kahn’s
paper was published in the early 1990s. From
the perspective of the mid- to late 1990s, Kahn’s
point that ‘the
new Malay middle-classes constitut[ed] a breeding ground for new forms
of
anti-Chinese sentiment’ is disputable (Kahn 1994, 39). Instead, the
Reformasi
movement and, subsequently, the formation of an opposition political
party,
Keadilan, demonstrated that the emerging urban culture of the Malaysian
middle
classes might, if only momentarily, be multiethnic. This is because
Keadilan
purported to unite all ethnicities under the rubric of social justice
and
democracy for all Malaysians. While some elements of the new Malay
middle-classes may have ‘constitute[d] a breeding ground for new forms
of
anti-Chinese sentiment’ during the research and writing of Kahn’s
essay, the subsequent
intercommunal solidarity rallies sparked off by Reformasi are important
reminders of cross-racial alliances in Malaysia’s history of race and
communal
politics. Like the effervescent Sabri Zain, I believe that the mass
street
demonstrations and the largely urban-based Reformasi movement that
emerged from
1998 are significant markers in Malaysian history and politics. These
events
collectively raised Malaysian social consciousness and debate about
national
identity and its constant nexus with race and class to a level that no
one
political event has ever succeeded in doing in the past. However the
political
scientist Maznah Mohammad predicts that despite Reformasi, the spectre
of
racial conflict still looms, as long as the tension between moderate
Muslims
and fundamentalist Islamicists is not solved. This situation is
exacerbated by
the economic recession, the tensions that arose out of the 1999
elections, the
internal factionalism facing Barisan Alternatif (the Opposition
coalition) and
UMNO’s attempts to cater to its Chinese voters (Maznah Mohammad 2001). Finally, I
should point
out that the texts I discuss below are largely the expressions and
perceptions
formed by the Malay middle-classes who are English-educated, and most
often,
bilingual. In fact, with the exception of S. Othman Kelantan’s novel, Juara,
all the written sources I discuss appeared originally in English. The
films are
in Malay, although the filmmakers themselves have been trained in the
West.
These cultural producers are no strangers to modernity themselves, and
their
own critical self-consciousness and positionalities outside tradition
and
inside modernity, must be taken into consideration even in films such
as Jogho
that make no overt commentary on modernity. Perhaps no
other contemporary Malaysian cultural
producer captures the theme of Malay rural alienation more vividly than
auteur
filmmaker U-Wei Haji Saari. In his controversial first film, Perempuan,
Isteri
Dan ...? (Woman, Wife and Whore 1993), the blatant
sexuality and
daring of the female protagonist, Zaleha, a newcomer married to Amir,
is
perceived by the villagers to be transgressive of the patriarchal
boundaries of
the kampung. She is finally dealt a violent death at the hands
of her
jealous, cruel and violent husband.[2]
U-Wei’s next auteur film,[3]
Kaki
Bakar (The Arsonist 1994) centres around an immigrant
Javanese
family constantly on the move from kampung to kampung
in rural Yet, by the film’s conclusion, Mamat rises to the occasion and illustrates that, indeed, the subaltern Malays in Unlike the novel from which the film is adapted, Jogho avoids focusing too much on the disillusionment that many rural Kelantanese Malays felt for the unkept promises of change and progress made by the Malay nationalist party, UMNO, after the achievement of independence in 1957.[4] During the 1950s, the rural Malays who did not benefit from independence felt like strangers within an imagined community that, reclaimed from the British, was supposed to be finally theirs. Positioned twenty years after Malayan independence, the narrative seems to suggest that the Thai Muslim community has been cast adrift to fend for itself. The audience learns that Mamat’s past involvement in Malayan realpolitik has devolved into fighting only in the bull arena. Contained within U-Wei’s narrative is an exploration of Malay identity as rooted in gender (masculinity), religious principles and nationality, in the fulfilment of kinship and communal obligations. This
is not to refute the possible contemporary political readings viewers
may bring
to bear on the film. For example, when viewed against the more recent
battle
between Dr Mahathir and his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, Jogho
becomes
a new political allegory. The unfair murder of Mamat’s brother by the
sore
loser in the bull arena may be intepreted to reflect Dr Mahathir’s
unfair
treatment of Anwar. Just as Calet’s victory over Pak Isa’s bull meant
that
people like Dolah and Pak Isa lost a great deal of money in the
betting,
Anwar’s rise to power also constituted a threat of financial loss to
Mahathir’s
business cronies. The Mahathir/Anwar conflict marked a split in the
ranks of
UMNO, the traditional political and cultural champion (‘jogho’)
of Malay
rights, severing the national imaginary in a way impossible to conceive
in the
past when Malay communal identity appeared homogeneous, seamless and
whole. U-Wei’s
representations
of the kampung are thus less than idealistic. Always strongly
patriarchal or dominated by narrow-minded, egocentric, self-righteous
and
brutal men, this kind of community does not allow strong women’s voices
to prevail,
though such women certainly exist to create a reluctant, resisting
presence in
all his films. In Jogho, Mamat’s wife and daughters whom he
ignores most
of the time in favour of his prized bull and his young son, are
alienated by
his chauvinistic attitude (in both senses of the word). They are forced
to
support him and wordlessly care for him while he gambles their savings
away on
bullfights, his ego totally invested in his expertise as a champion or ‘jogho’.
They cook and clean, wash his clothes, nurse him when he gets injured
by the
bull, feed his bull, work on the land, manage the finances and raise
money for
his bail and for betting. As his wife rightly mutters, ‘Men, they never
grow
up.’ U-Wei’s
film succeeds in reflecting several points about rural Malay community:
the
complex gendered roles of women that are marginalised by the men in the
kampung,
the alienation of the Patani Malays from Thai majority rule as well as
from
Malaysian nationalism, and perhaps lastly, the alienation of the
individual
Kelantanese (anak Kelantan) whose authenticity (jati),
leadership
and maleness come under question by their social peers when, in
contradistinction to a tradition of blood feud, he fails to carry
through the
violent vendetta. When the Thai police arrive, Mamat’s purposeful but
wooden
statement, ‘Blood has to be repaid with blood’, has a hollow ring about
it.
U-Wei’s Mamat is a tragic flawed figure who, when finally blessed with
the
self-realisation and individual (and perhaps spiritual) growth which
merit
going against the beliefs of his fellow villagers, is unable to stop
the
inevitable bloodshed from occurring. Aside
from U-Wei’s films which broach kampung attitudes about gender,
other
films also reflect the kampung’s non-acceptance of
transgendered
identity in its attempts to preserve a homogeneous collective identity
and
solidarity. In the film Bukak Api (1999),[8]
the intolerant nature of the kampung is mentioned by a male
transexual
prostitute who has found her way to The
case of Bukak Api is one extreme example of gender and sexual
transgression not being tolerated in the kampung Yet, more
moderate
moral and sexual transgressions in the kampung are not accepted
either.
Mulaika Hijjas’ short story ‘Confinement’ shows a kampung
community’s
failure to be supportive and inclusive of those who transgress moral
boundaries: ‘The people at the mosque gave us some money, until the
story got
out that the father of the baby was not my father’ (Hijjas 1999, 86).
Apart
from Mak Teh, who babysits the young girl Ria’s two younger brothers in
exchange for doing her laundry, and Pak Abas, who periodically drops by
with
some spare cash, ‘twenty ringgit a month, to sooth his guilt’, Ria’s
family has
no other friends in the kampung (Hijjas 1999, 86). Ria’s
widowed mother
is pregnant with Pak Abas’ child after Ria’s father died of dengue
fever. Her
mother has become mentally unstable since her pregnancy and I surmise
that she
was raped by Pak Abas, Ria’s father’s ‘friend’.[9] The pregnant woman is confined indoors away
from prying eyes and village gossip. ‘Pak Soud said such-and-such a
thing to me
the other day about your mother, Ria, and I was so shocked I hardly
knew what
to say!’ being one such example of gossiping (Hijjas 1999, 84). It then
becomes
the joint responsibility of the grandmother and the young girl to sell
off the
baby to a Malay woman and her white husband from the city to ensure
their
economic survival and to preserve the reputation of their family in
Kampung Air
Keruh. Similarly the
1998 film Panas
(Heat) portrays the kampung as a place of alienation,
perversity and
despair as well as complex and morally difficult sexual relations. In
this
narrative of near incest, a licentious middle-aged man marries his
beautiful
stepdaughter almost immediately after his wife’s demise. His sexual
perversity
is not tolerated in the kampung and he and his young reluctant
bride are
forced to leave. This film too deconstructs the myth of the traditional
kampung
as an ideal place of community and mutual support, subverting the
‘invention of
tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Polite Malay kampung
society does
not deal with incest and rape by fathers, stepfathers and uncles, so
these
works clearly identify and address sensitive, real sociological
problems
encountered by women in the village.[10]
These cultural works expose the underpinnings of kampung
society as a
dominant structural means of regulating social behaviour and values,
finally
re-establishing hegemonic mores over those who challenge them. Why are
contemporary
writers and filmmakers re-focusing on the idea of community and kampung?
Some, like kampung-bred U-Wei, may want to capture the essence
of
village society while others are perhaps reacting to the nostalgic,
whitewashed
renditions of the kampung in official discourses. Through
critical
lenses, U-Wei’s un-nostalgic films encapsulate the feel, look and
senses of kampung
society. But more generally, perhaps the re-focus on the kampung
is as
much an exploration of Malayness at a time when the semiotics and
meanings of
tradition and modernity are still unstable: sometimes clashing,
sometimes
melding—the modern questioning and breaking down the traditional, the
two
transforming each other in significant ways to form new, even hybrid
notions of
Malay identity.[11]
While
the P.Ramlee films of the 1950s and 1960s may arguably be ‘modernist’
and have
explored what it meant for Malays to be caught between tradition and
modernity,
the 1990s NEP generation remains more unique and serious in their
exploration of
Malay identity because of the major role the state, the NEP, and
Mahathirism
have played in altering Malay consciousness and society (Hilley 2001).
A
conscious engagement with that discourse of what the kampung
signifies
exists because the new urban Malay middle classes still retain strong
ties to
the kampung, as evidenced by the emptiness and quiet of Kuala
Lumpur
during the Hari Raya holiday upon completion of Ramadan, when the
majority balik
kampung (return to the kampung). Even within
the span of
one generation, in the last thirty years, Malaysia has undergone
tremendous
rapid urban development, technological and economic improvement and
modernity.
Thus, Malaysian modernity may perhaps be categorized best as uneven.
This is
apparent in the expanded layout of the city, Kuala Lumpur, and its
changing
skyline of eclectic architecture, which narrates a multi-layered
history of
multiple cultural influences. Like any other city, Kuala Lumpur has
become ‘the
primary source of estrangement’ (Bookchin 1986), more visibly so in the
post-NEP period than ever before, as signs of development and
technological
progress fill the landscape: smartcard tollbooths at the end of
highways,
mega-projects like the Petronas Twin Towers, The Mines Resort City, KL
Tower,
light rail transport, KLIA (the Kuala Lumpur International Airport).[12] Yet, the belatedness of modernity, (or
postmodernity, according to others like Ziauddin Sardar), what Homi
Bhabha
calls ‘the coeval, often incommensurable tension between the influence
of
traditional “ethnicist” identifications that coexist with contemporary
secular, modernising aspirations’, (Bhabha 1994, 250) suggests
the
persistance of
communal identification among new migrants to the city, or at least an
attempt
to recreate communally-shared identities in an alien urban environment.
It should
come as no
surprise that more positive values associated with the kampung
have been
transferred to the city and suburbs by the post-NEP generation, not
only
appearing in some urban-located films and literature, but also being
channelled
through government television commercials into many suburban
households. In
contrast to U-Wei’s kampung-based films, Malaysian woman
filmmaker
Shuhaimi Baba’s urban-centred films serve to reassure viewers that
modernity,
individualism and urbanisation can coexist with kampung
communal values.
They validate both rural and urban sites and sometimes even demonstrate
how the kampung is fashioning or renovating itself as modern.[13] I will discuss her films, as well as Sabri
Zain’s Reformasi diary, in order to illustrate that communities
can be
found in urban spaces, protest zones and cyberspace. Thus,
Shuhaimi’s outlook on community is one that is
receptive of strangers and celebrates the diversity they bring to the
community. Similarly, community, in the sense of support, solidarity
and strong
friendships, can also emerge in the most unlikely places. This is
especially
true for the transexuals and prostitutes who find community with each
other
down in Chow Kit Road in the educational melodrama Bukak Api,
co-sponsored by Pink Triangle and the Malaysian AIDS Council. The
characters
were played by real-life sex workers who worked closely with these
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the director and his crew to
come up
with the plot, dialogue and situations. Grassroots NGOs like Pink
Triangle
function to foster a sense of community among their ‘clientele’ by
providing a
safe space and support and advocacy for them. Yet,
instead of leaving it up to individuals to be
good Muslims, the Islamic Affairs Department regulates Malay Muslim
behaviour
and identity through policy-making and enforcement. One provision under
the
Malaysian syariah laws is the rule against khalwat
(‘close
proximity’) in which any Muslim found with an unrelated member of the
opposite
sex ‘in any secluded place or in a house or room under circumstances
which may
give rise to suspicion that they were engaged in immoral acts shall be
guilty
of an offence’ punishable by a fine up to a maximum of RM$ 790 (Paddock
2000).
Famous local pop stars and politicians have been arrested for khalwat
in
places like hotel rooms and parked cars, sometimes based on ‘tip-offs’,
suggesting again that a network of surveillance prevails. The issue of
privacy
in the city has also since been problematised by the widely-publicised
charges
of sodomy levelled at Anwar in the local press in 1998, blurring the
lines
between public and private, and local and global, as Malaysians talked
about
Anwar in the same breath as the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Perhaps
the foremost example of alternative
communities in the post-NEP climate is the Reformasi movement. Sabri
Zain has
published in book format his Internet postings of the street
demonstrations,
the pro-Anwar rallies and his coverage of the support for other
outspoken
opposition leaders and activists like Lim Guan Eng and Tian Chua around
the
time of Anwar’s arrest. In his book Face Off: A Malaysian Reformasi
Diary
(1998-99), we get a notion of how alternative sites for shared
communal
values are created. Media censorship and blatant government propaganda
during
the Anwar affair led Malaysians to turn to alternative sources of
information.
The internet was the first and sometimes primary source for many
Reformists,
with numerous internet discussion lists such as Gerak-Net Adil-Net,
Anwarxtpm,
and Sedarlah appearing during and immediately after the affair. In
my reading of Sabri Zain’s book, I have found Michel De Certeau’s
imaginative
and utopian essay ‘Walking In The City’ in The Practice of Everyday
Life
extremely useful as a way of theorizing community practices and
subjectivity on
the streets of urban Kuala Lumpur. Its relevance to the Malaysian
context
hinges on Certeau’s idea that the formation of subjectivity or selfhood
includes both a sense of space and place. In other words, space is
deeply
implicated in the formation of subjectivity. Just as the kampung
is
considered the locus of Malay identity, the KL streets during Reformasi
shaped
the identity of the ‘Malaysian protester’. At the same time, the
stories,
personal histories and one’s memories of certain places, even spirits
that
haunt certain locations, all subject-ify, communitize and give special
meaning
to those spaces. They are forms of spatial practice that invert the
panopticon
by providing an alternative and perhaps subversive meaning to that
which is
intended. Certeau’s observation of the functioning panopticon in New
York City,
which I will discuss below, is also important because it injects irony
into the
idea that the planned modern city (whether set in the First or Third
World) is
a liberating anonymous space for those escaping the traditional kinship
web and
claustrophobic surveillance of the village/kampung. After all,
as
mentioned earlier, privacy in the city may be more elusive than
anticipated.
Simultaneously and paradoxically, Certeau’s theory of spatialised
subjectivity
offers an optimistic way of considering agency in the process of
‘walking’
(acting/enunciating), or ‘shopping’ and thus gives form and appearance
to
alternative communities in urban spaces. Certeau
suggests that memory, stories and
daily practices can construct meanings that are very different from
that of
institutional structures with regard to geographical spaces and
constructed
order. I would like to extend his idea of the potential subversion in
daily
practices to include extraordinary practices such as the
Reformasi
movement in Malaysia. ‘Walking in the city’ implicitly focuses only on
the ways individual daily practices rupture the panoptic order.
The
mass
Reformasi street demonstrations, however, reveal a communal
practice
that signifies an open challenge to the existing political order. Thus,
my
primary focus is still subjectivity as it intersects uncannily with
space in
the concept of kampung and community. Deploying Certeau in this
case
sheds light on the operations of electronic and non-electronic
discourse around
Reformasi and notions of subject(ive) resistance at a level that evades
state
and spatial structures. The analogy
between
Certeau and the Malaysian Reformist street demonstrations in KL is
apparent in
Sabri Zain’s accounts of the people regaining some sense of agency by
reclaiming the streets while being keenly conscious of that panopticon
surveillance mechanism that is not only manifested in the strong
presence of
police and the Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) on the street level, but also
situated (or geographically ‘placed’, to use Certeau’s precise meaning)
up in
Bukit Aman overlooking Dataran Merdeka, where these events took place: Thus, the
‘omnipotent
sentinel’ or, coincidentally, as recorded by Sabri Zain, the police
headquarters becomes that ‘“proper” place in which to exercise their
[Foucault’s panoptic procedures] authority’ (Reynolds and Fitzpatrick
1999,
67). This
communal, shared act of subversion occurs at
multiple levels. For example, the names of shopping complexes like
Sogo,
Pertama Shopping Complex, Campbell Shopping Complex become landmarks to
Sabri’s
readers who may have been out there on the streets that very day.
However, the
names in this situation ‘detach themselves from the places they were
supposed
to define and serve as imaginary meeting-points on itineraries which,
as
metaphors, they determine for reasons that are foreign to their
original value
but may be recognized or not by passers-by’ (Certeau 1984, 104). In
other
words, the names of places Sabri Zain’s readers would ordinarily
associate with
the consumerist act of shopping start to accumulate a significantly
different
meaning as sites of political struggle, possibly, for those ‘in the
know’, who
become part of the community. In Sabri Zain’s eyewitness accounts,
these
shopping malls serve as the markers of conflict and targets of refuge
between
ordinary citizens and the police. For example, the journalist ‘heard
shouts
from the Pertama Shopping Complex across the road’ where some policemen
had
surrounded a boy and ‘were kicking him mercilessly’. When asked to move
after
having witnessed this, Sabri and his partner ‘complied and walked away
towards
Campbell Shopping Complex’ (Sabri Zain 2000, 25-26). Here, Campbell
mall acts,
presumably, as a refuge. Although
some place or street names may have slippery
meanings, the street actions of the Reformists actualize, re-activate
or revive
forgotten symbolic meanings attached to some of those very names.
Dataran
Merdeka, usually the locus of staid ritualistic pomp and official
ceremony once
a year during National Day celebrations, regained its historical
meaning of
freedom first associated with the popular hopes of a new nation in
1957.
Another one of the busiest areas of social protest, Jalan TAR, was
named after
the first Prime Minister who read the declaration of independence in
Dataran
Merdeka the same year. In the 1980s, towards the end of the Tunku’s
life when
Mahathir’s government was fraught with business scandals, the Tunku was
snubbed
by Mahathir, who did not extend the customary invitation to him to
attend the
UMNO General Assembly. One cannot help but make the comparison between
the two
leaders and their different styles of leadership. Mahathir’s swift,
authoritarian and harsh actions have been perceived as ‘un-Malay’ by
the
ordinary Malay on the street. According to an elderly Malay lady lining
up to
enter the courtroom where Anwar was to be tried: ‘We Malays don’t
usually treat
people like this. Maruah (dignity) is very important to us.
Even the
guilty deserve dignity. It’s in our ancient annals, the Sejarah
Melayu.
But our leaders don’t seem to understand this. This is not the Malay
way. That
is why so many of us are angry’.[16]
The phrase ‘we Malays’ by implication seem to exclude Mahathir for
‘treat[ing]
people like this’ (Sabri Zain 2000, 39). Sabri’s
book is important because it captures a euphoric moment in Malaysian
history of
an empowered urban community manifesting ‘transversal power’, a term
Reynolds
and Fitzpatrick use to describe Certeau’s strategy. According to them,
‘transversal power’ is something that makes possible ‘the transgression
of the
boundaries of subjective territory’ as people cut across the conceptual
boundaries of their prescribed subjective addresses (Reynolds and
Fitzpatrick
1999, 74). The cover photograph of Sabri’s book, the map of downtown KL
inside
its covers, as well as the written narrative—the ‘spatial stories’—all
work in
conjunction to give, so to speak, the full picture of the ‘unlimited
diversity
of the enunciatory operations’ as well as their ‘graphic trail’
(Certeau 1984,
99). The map guides and aids the curious reader in reconstructing and
remembering ‘a way of being in the world’ that was hopeful and positive (Certeau 1984, 100). Read by a politicised
reader excited by the accounts of urban popular democracy, the book
evokes ‘the
remembering of forgotten practices and the subsequent reconstructing or
imbuing
them with new meanings’ (Reynolds and Fitzpatrick 1999, 75). During
this time, the government also tried to scare
the Chinese community by drawing parallels between the Malaysian
Reformasi
demonstrations and the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia of May 1998. But
Sabri
remarks that no Chinese-owned shops or Chinese demonstrators were
killed or
raped at the Malaysian Reformasi street gatherings. ‘I myself saw
dozens of “Free
Guan Eng” banners and posters next to the “Free Anwar” posters at these
demonstrations. This did not seem anti-Chinese to me’ (Sabri Zain 2000,
65). [17]
In fact, Reformasi in Malaysia, whether it took place in the streets or
on the
Internet, had the capability of creating and fostering community (or an
imagined community as its political leaders would like to think) across
ethnic
communal lines. As Sabri insists, ‘[Reformasi] is about whether the
Malaysian
people are ready for democracy or not—whether we have grown out of the
“divide-and-rule” of racial politics’ (Sabri Zain 2000, 66). Conclusion Just
as culture and identity are constantly in flux,
these alternative communities are formed by exigency. They are neither
stable
nor permanent. In fact, their raison d’être is contingent on the
breakdown of
the nation-state’s ability to provide a sense of community. Should the
nation-state successfully fulfil its Enlightenment promise of
emancipation and
democracy for those of its subjects who are strangers within, then
these
alternative communities might dissolve as easily as they have been
formed. Gaik Cheng Khoo will
take up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Asian Research Institute in
Singapore
in July 2003. She is a creative writer who until recently taught at the
University of Victoria, BC Canada. She can be contacted at
gckhoo1@excite.com Notes
[1]. ‘Transethnic
solidarity has been suppressed or erased by complex structural and
ideological
means’ in Malaysia (Mandal 2001, 1). [2] For a detailed
reading of Perempuan, Isteri Dan ...? see Khoo 2003. [3] His
second film, Black Widow, Wajah Ayu
(The Charming Black Widow, 1994) was not under his sole authorship.
Produced
and co-written with Raja Azmi, it was the latter who approached U-Wei
with the
idea to make the film. [4] I am
indebted to Clive Kessler for this
observation. Kessler translated into English ‘Pahlawan Lembu’, the
short story
that was subsequently turned into the novel, Juara. [5] See
Mahathir Mohamad (1970, 117-118), for his
definition of amok as a definitive Malay male stereotype.
Philip
Holden’s Modern Subjects/Colonial Texts, especially chapter 5
on amok
is also rewarding on this topic. Poet and critic Salleh Ben Joned
believes that
it is sakit hati, literally, the sick liver, that is associated
with amok
and the lover blighted in love (1994, 160). [6] As noted by Aihwa
Ong (1990, 453-457), amok seems for the most part to be a
particularly
gendered act carried out by men in Southeast Asia. The closest
equivalent of amok
for women seems to be spirit possession and latah, during which
the
woman may lapse into obscene language. [7] Songkok is
the oval-shaped cap (fez) worn by Malay Muslim males. [8] The title,
literally meaning ‘open fire’, is
‘red-light district Chow Kit slang for sex with a client’ (Amir
Muhammad
2000). [9] The
softer interpretation (preferred by some
of my students) is that while she was in a vulnerable state after her
husband's
death, she might have sought comfort from Pak Abas who was more than
willing.
According to this interpretation, her current mental state conceivably
stems
from the mixture of guilt and remorse she felt about her intercourse
with Pak
Abas (having occurred so soon after her husband's death, not to mention
the
shame of having a child out of wedlock). [10] Nevertheless, cases
of rape and incest are frequently reported in the daily newspapers. [11] Homi Bhabha has
written extensively on hybridity as a postcolonial condition (Bhabha
1994). In
the 1990s, urban Malay writers who write in English began discussing
Malay
identity and questioning notions of ethnic and cultural purity by
positing the
hybrid as a more positive category (Salleh Ben Joned 1994; Karim Raslan
1996;
Rehman Rashid 1996; Amir Muhammad 1998). Unsurprisingly, all of the
Malay
writers above except Salleh Ben Joned are of mixed ancestry. [12] The extreme
postmodern juxtaposition and pastiche of Kuala Lumpur architecture
embodied in
‘The Mall’, ‘Lot 10’ and the chains of five-star hotels collectively
‘perform a
particular kind of violence on the assumptions of Malay identity, in
particular
its source of sustenance, the notions of space and time’ (Ziauddin
Sardar 2000,
121). [13] When in
the final scene of Ringgit
Kasorgga, Pak Tih’s touristy open-air restaurant built of wood and
bamboo
in the heroine Nina’s kampung is renovated, she gives
instructions to
the movers to hang a traditional gong on its walls. This is a symbolic
gesture
of ‘popular’ survival, of refashioning and reframing tradition in the
face of
modernity, signified by corrupt development and political compromise
(or
defeat, depending on one’s reading of the film’s conclusion). The shot
preceding this is of a kuda kepang prop (symbol of traditional
dance as
practised by Nina’s family) being crushed into the mud by a bulldozer
(symbolizing modernisation and ‘progress’ to benefit only the corrupt
political
elite that she had fought so hard in the film to expose). Hence, the
presence
of the forces of modernity in the kampung is represented as
inevitable
but how and to what extent modernity affects tradition depends on
popular
resistance or popular compromise through strategies of reappropriation
or
acceptance. [14] ‘Compared to U-Wei,
Shuhaimi [Baba]’s depiction of Malay culture is thought to be a little
“touristy” while U-Wei indulges in it more deeply’ (Fuziah and Raja
Ahmad
Alauddin 1995, 68). In personal communication, the film critic Hassan
Muthalib
also expressed this point, stating that U-Wei’s films reflect his deep
knowledge of Malay culture whereas Shuhami Baba’s portrayal of kampung
culture is rather superficial. This is unsurprising, if her portrayal
is based
on her own urban perceptions of what the kampung is. [15] A similar
example of ‘space [as] a practiced
place’ (Certeau 1984, 117) and the acquisition of political meaning for
street
names is the ‘EDSA Uprising’ of 1986 during the People Power movement
in the
Philippines, EDSA being Epifanio De Los Santos Avenue, a major avenue
in Metro
Manila where the demonstrations occurred (Siapno 1995, 230). [16] Maruah is
translated by Sabri Zain here as ‘dignity’ but it also means ‘honour.’ Maruah
in this case as well as in Jogho is part of Malay custom, adat.
The interesting difference is that while maruah/adat conflicts
with
Islam in Jogho (the law is in God's hands and in the hands of
the
police, not ordinary citizens), the Reformists appealed to the name of adat
(and, though unspoken here, Islam). This is no surprise as adat
in
Kelantan is being purified by Islamic fundamentalists whereas the
pro-Anwar
Reformists, considered moderate Muslims, are perhaps better able to
negotiate a
balance between adat and Islam. Malay adat consists of
a blend of
animistic and Hindu beliefs and practices as well as elements of Islam.
Some of
the contradictions between adat and Islam are not tolerated as
much now
by Muslim purists and those in the moderate government anxious to
appeal to the
more religious constituents. [17] Lim Guan Eng was an
opposition politician of the predominantly Chinese DAP. He was jailed
under the
ISA for criticising the injustice in a case where an UMNO politician
had sex
with an underaged Malay girl but was not punished. Instead, the
government and
media focused on discrediting the teenaged victim. This case is
regarded by the
Reformasi as another example of the corrupt cronyism of Mahathir’s
government. |
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