The first premise is this: That there is no such thing as racial differences, for the simple reason that there is only one race, and that happens to be the human race. To suggest that racial differences exist on the basis that there are real genetic, biological distinctions and differences between different communities would be akin to comparing Asians, Africans, Arabs and Europeans to different species of animals, and that – as we should know by now – is clearly false.
The term ‘racial difference’ is therefore in itself a misnomer and from a logical, positivist point of view is literally nonsensical. In fact the term has no empirical referent, cannot be positively justified or empirically verified, and works only within the context of a specific language-game and discursive economy that takes for granted a host of other equally mistaken assumptions as its false premises. Racial difference, as an idea and a value, has its origins in the politics of early colonialism and emerged at the same time as other pseudo-scientific theories of paltry worth such as social Darwinism, the idea of ‘masculine and feminine’ races (as put forward by the likes of Count Gobineau et. al.), the theory of native ‘auto-genocide’ and other ideological devices and instruments that served the ends of racialised colonial-capitalism and the logic of Empire in the past. And that’s where it belongs: in the past.
The second premise appears to contradict the first, but serves as a premise for our discussion today and it is this: That despite the illogical and nonsensical status of the concept of racial difference, Malaysian politics, from the late-19th century all the way to the post-colonial present, has been shaped and determined by the logic of racial differences nonetheless.
Malaysians today are witness to a host of oddities that pass for the conduct of ordinary politics in our country. Practically every single Malaysian born after 1957 has grown used to the rather peculiar political landscape of the country, which has been ruled by the same ruling coalition of right-of-centre, ethno-nationalist conservative parties that are ideologically similar to each other but which remain differentiated by virtue of the ethnic and religious backgrounds of their respective constituents and supporters. Odd that this should be the norm in Malaysia; for we would look askance at similar practices if they were put to work elsewhere: Imagine, if you will, an American political landscape where there was not one Democratic party but rather several, divided and differentiated along the lines of race and culture. One would be puzzled by such an equation, and would wonder why there needed to be a Democratic party for white Anglo-Saxons, another for African-Americans, yet another for Latinos and of course yet another for Asian-Americans.
Yet this is precisely the situation that we have in Malaysia today; a differentiated political landscape where the frontiers of political difference are not delineated by ideological differences but rather racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious particularities instead. A cursory overview of the national day parades that are held annually every 31st August would testify to the enduring legacy of racialised politics in Malaysia, as every single ethnic-racial group that has been identified by the national census will be invited to come out and parade its ethnic-racial identity in fancy dress. Once a year Malaysians from all walks of life are asked to put on what amounts to their specific ethnic-racial ‘dress’ and wear their ethnic-racial identities – literally – on their sleeve, in an affirmation of how ‘different’ we are meant to be from each other.
How this bizarre (and we would argue, unstable) state of affairs came into being will be the subject of this lecture, as we hope to take a walk back down the beaten paths of history to uncover the emergence and workings of racialised politics in the country and to answer the question why does it persist until today?
One of the problems that we encounter when trying to do this sort of deconstructive reading of post-colonial Malaysian history, however, is the fact that almost all of our own history books written post-1957 have internalised and accepted the logic of race and racial differences uncritically as well. This in itself is a testimony to the extent to which the logic of racial difference has come to be hegemonised and sedimented in the daily life and political culture of our country. To make things worse, even in other areas such as political economy, anthropology, sociology and political theory, racial categories abound and remain predominant; yet again uninterrogated. What is therefore required is to go back as far as possible to trace the earliest moments in our nation’s history when the very idea of ‘race’ – a concept that was novel to Southeast Asia and which had no equivalent in any of the local languages of the Nusantara region – was brought into play in the first place.
It is here, through a careful reading and re-reading of our convoluted past, that we will first encounter the earliest moments when the notion of racial difference was introduced in the setting of colonial Malaya, Indo-China and the East Indies. And as we shall see below, it took quite a lot of work to persuade the natives of Southeast Asia that there was such a thing as racial difference and that they were racially different from each other.
04/08/10
The term ‘racial difference’ is therefore in itself a misnomer and from a logical, positivist point of view is literally nonsensical. In fact the term has no empirical referent, cannot be positively justified or empirically verified, and works only within the context of a specific language-game and discursive economy that takes for granted a host of other equally mistaken assumptions as its false premises. Racial difference, as an idea and a value, has its origins in the politics of early colonialism and emerged at the same time as other pseudo-scientific theories of paltry worth such as social Darwinism, the idea of ‘masculine and feminine’ races (as put forward by the likes of Count Gobineau et. al.), the theory of native ‘auto-genocide’ and other ideological devices and instruments that served the ends of racialised colonial-capitalism and the logic of Empire in the past. And that’s where it belongs: in the past.
The second premise appears to contradict the first, but serves as a premise for our discussion today and it is this: That despite the illogical and nonsensical status of the concept of racial difference, Malaysian politics, from the late-19th century all the way to the post-colonial present, has been shaped and determined by the logic of racial differences nonetheless.
Malaysians today are witness to a host of oddities that pass for the conduct of ordinary politics in our country. Practically every single Malaysian born after 1957 has grown used to the rather peculiar political landscape of the country, which has been ruled by the same ruling coalition of right-of-centre, ethno-nationalist conservative parties that are ideologically similar to each other but which remain differentiated by virtue of the ethnic and religious backgrounds of their respective constituents and supporters. Odd that this should be the norm in Malaysia; for we would look askance at similar practices if they were put to work elsewhere: Imagine, if you will, an American political landscape where there was not one Democratic party but rather several, divided and differentiated along the lines of race and culture. One would be puzzled by such an equation, and would wonder why there needed to be a Democratic party for white Anglo-Saxons, another for African-Americans, yet another for Latinos and of course yet another for Asian-Americans.
Yet this is precisely the situation that we have in Malaysia today; a differentiated political landscape where the frontiers of political difference are not delineated by ideological differences but rather racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious particularities instead. A cursory overview of the national day parades that are held annually every 31st August would testify to the enduring legacy of racialised politics in Malaysia, as every single ethnic-racial group that has been identified by the national census will be invited to come out and parade its ethnic-racial identity in fancy dress. Once a year Malaysians from all walks of life are asked to put on what amounts to their specific ethnic-racial ‘dress’ and wear their ethnic-racial identities – literally – on their sleeve, in an affirmation of how ‘different’ we are meant to be from each other.
How this bizarre (and we would argue, unstable) state of affairs came into being will be the subject of this lecture, as we hope to take a walk back down the beaten paths of history to uncover the emergence and workings of racialised politics in the country and to answer the question why does it persist until today?
One of the problems that we encounter when trying to do this sort of deconstructive reading of post-colonial Malaysian history, however, is the fact that almost all of our own history books written post-1957 have internalised and accepted the logic of race and racial differences uncritically as well. This in itself is a testimony to the extent to which the logic of racial difference has come to be hegemonised and sedimented in the daily life and political culture of our country. To make things worse, even in other areas such as political economy, anthropology, sociology and political theory, racial categories abound and remain predominant; yet again uninterrogated. What is therefore required is to go back as far as possible to trace the earliest moments in our nation’s history when the very idea of ‘race’ – a concept that was novel to Southeast Asia and which had no equivalent in any of the local languages of the Nusantara region – was brought into play in the first place.
It is here, through a careful reading and re-reading of our convoluted past, that we will first encounter the earliest moments when the notion of racial difference was introduced in the setting of colonial Malaya, Indo-China and the East Indies. And as we shall see below, it took quite a lot of work to persuade the natives of Southeast Asia that there was such a thing as racial difference and that they were racially different from each other.
04/08/10
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