Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia

This book seeks to break new ground, both empirically and conceptually, in examiningdiscourses of identity formation and the agency of critical social practices in Malaysia. Takingan inclusive cultural studies perspective, it questions the ideological narrative of ‘race’ and‘ethnicity’ that dominates explanations of conflicts and cleavages in the Malaysian context.The contributions are organised in three broad themes. ‘Identities in Contestation: Borders,Complexities and Hybridities’ takes a range of empirical studies—literary translation,religion, gender, ethnicity, indigeneity and sexual orientation—to break down preconceivednotions of fixed identities. This then opens up an examination of ‘Identities and Movements:Agency and Alternative Discourses’, in which contributors deal with counter-hegemonicsocial movements—of antiracism, young people, environmentalism and independentpublishing—that explicitly seek to open up greater critical, democratic space withinthe Malaysian polity. The third section, ‘Identities and Narratives: Culture and Media’, thenprovides a close textual reading of some exemplars of new cultural and media practices foundin personal testimonies, popular music, film, radio programming and storytelling who haveconsciously created bodies of work that question the dominant national narrative. Thisbook is a valuable interdisciplinary work for advanced students and researchers interestedin representations of identity and nationhood in Malaysia, and for those with wider interestsin the fields of critical cultural studies and discourse analysis.
“Here is a fresh, startling book to aid the task of unbinding the straitjackets of ‘Malay’, ‘Chinese’and ‘Indian’, with which colonialism bound Malaysia’s plural inheritance, and on which thepostcolonial state continues to rely. In it, a panoply of unlikely identities—Bajau liminality,Kelabit philosophy, Islamic feminism, refugee hybridity and more—finds expression and offershope for liberation.”                                                                                    —Rachel Leow, University of Cambridge
“This book shakes the foundations of race thinking in Malaysian studies by expanding the rangeof cases, perspectives and outcomes of identity. It offers students of Malaysia an examinationof identity and agency that is expansive, critical and engaging, and its interdisciplinary depthbrings Malaysian studies into conversation with scholarship across the world.”                                                                    —Sumit Mandal, University of Nottingham Malaysia
“This is a much-needed work that helps us to take apart the colonial inherited categories of racewhich informed the notion of the plural society, the idea of plurality without multiculturalism.It complicates the picture of identity by bringing in religion, gender, indigeneity and sexualorientation, and helps us to imagine what a truly multiculturalist Malaysia might look like.”                                                                     —Syed Farid Alatas, National University of Singapore