Is Melayu (or Malayness) a category of ethnicity? Race? Nation? Politics? Culture? Language? Geography? The answer seems to be all of the above. Melayu signifies differently in different countries of Southeast Asia, and its meanings are constantly being redefined for various ideological purposes. It can only be explored, not comprehended or defined (Maier, p. 321). Due to the confusing nature of the term it is tempting to throw up one's hands (and some scholars have!). Nevertheless the field of Malay studies has expanded recently, with several books, articles, and special issues of journals published in the last decade. The difficulty of defining Melayu does not diminish its significance; rather, the problematic nature of the term is precisely the reason for its continued interrogation. To the scholars who have thrown up their hands, Malayness as an ethnic category is no more problematic than any other ethnic category. And the stakes are high. Malayness as a marker of ethnic identity signifies everyday struggles over the nature and practice of citizenship, community, and rights.
The essays in this book attempt to move the question away from the primordialist colonial discourse about ‘“who” or “what” is (a) Malay?’ to Malayness as a discursive practice: ‘Who (defines) Malayness?’ and ‘When was (is) Malayness used as a category for grouping people together and for what ideological purposes?’ The authors do not ignore primordialist claims, but interrogate them as constructed categories in particular social contexts: ‘Who gets to enjoy the privileged status of Malayness and who is excluded from those privileges?’ These questions are deeply grounded in historical and material contexts: ‘What conditions made it possible to think about being Malay in particular ways and not others?’
The introduction ably demonstrates that Malayness cannot be conceptualised as a single entity. For example, the book begins with three epigraphs from different historical periods and geographical locations, in which Malayness is represented in terms of race, kinship, and nationhood. The solution to understanding Melayu, as proposed by the editors Maznah Mohamad and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, is to ‘view Melayu as a signifier that brings to mind a whole array of associations — places, languages, families, communities, nation-states, cultural symbols, events, texts, collectives, political parties and religious beliefs’ (p. xiv).
The book constitutes twelve chapters arranged in four geographical areas: Malaysia (5), Singapore (3), Indonesia and the Philippines (2), and across nations (2). Melayu does not circumscribe a geographical place, but it does take place in specific places. Further, although the latter two chapters are subsumed within the ‘across nations’ section, several other chapters deal with trans-local topics (for example, the chapters by Aljunied, van der Putten, and Curaming).
In addition to the geographic organisation of chapters, the book emphasises three ‘dimensions which illuminate the various associations by which Malayness is built upon’: politics, poetics, and paradoxes (p. xv). These ‘dimensions’ intersect and so it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which chapters align with which dimensions. Politics refers to not only who is granted privileges based on being defined as Malay (for example, in Malaysia, where Malays are ‘first among equals’), but also the institutions that grant ‘the right to define and determine the boundaries of Malayness’ (p. xv). Poetics refers to narratives of Malayness in colonial texts and contemporary novels and poetry. Politics and poetics are deeply imbricated: discourses about Melayu are expressed in different ways according to historical and political contexts, and forms of expression can be mined for political meanings. An awareness of the paradoxical meanings of Melayu seems to pervade nearly every chapter.
In chapter 1, Judith Nagata sketches an historical overview that emphasises the shifting boundaries of Malayness in Malaysia. Nagata concludes that the modern state of Malaysia under the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional government promotes a relatively narrow ideal image of what constitutes a Malay. Maznah Mohamad's chapter presents five varied conceptions of Melayu (‘texts of dissent’) from the 1940s to the present. Defining Melayu seems to have entered a new phase in literature of the late 1990s. For example, in I am Muslim, author Dina Zaman's ‘cosmo-piety’ blends irreverence, postmodernism, self-reflection, and plays with a commitment to being Malaysian, Malay, and Muslim. Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin, founder and owner of the popular blogsite Malaysia Today, advocates an ‘unimagining of the Melayu’ (p. 59) as counter-narrative to the rigid definition advocated by UMNO.
Several chapters describe groups that are marginal to Malaysian statist definitions of Malayness. Wong Soak Koon's chapter about Fatimah Basu's novel Salam Maria shows how the main character challenges gendered definitions of women by the masculinist Malaysian state. Paradoxes of Malayness are at the forefront of Achmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid's chapter. On the one hand, Malaysia is a racialised state that favours Malays (ketuanan Melayu). On the other hand, pluralism is written into the constitution. Further, Sufi beliefs and practices are viewed as an (sometimes threatening) alternative to Malaysia's ‘legalistic Islam’. Rusaslina Idrus's chapter emphasises the history of relations among Malays and Orang Asli, who have been positioned as one of several ethnic communities, not the privileged one.
Three chapters illustrate how Malayness in Singapore is equally complex. Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied shows that Malay identity formation is not only a local process, but involves regional and global processes of Islamicisation. Suriani Suratman joins a growing scholarship on the symbolism and politics of women wearing the tudung (head covering). Based on a small sample of five women, Suratman's case study explores why women choose to veil or unveil in Singapore. Ivan Kwek considers how television sets the terms for representing Malayness at a Malay-language television channel in Singapore where producers imagine the audience as embodying something called a ‘Malay mindset’ that is ‘still Malay but not too Malay’.
Two chapters on Indonesia and the Philippines focus on ‘borderlands and forgotten Malays.’ Imagined as the heartland of Malay culture, the site of the ‘pure and original’ Malays, Kepulauan Riau (Kepri) is actually a borderland that sits on the edges of three nation-states. From this borderland perspective, Jan van der Putten looks at how definitions of Malayness and nationhood are ‘maintained, fortified, contested, and deconstructed’ (pp. 220–21). Here, Malayness, as in many of the chapters in this book, emerges through contact and crisis. Recent attempts to resurrect traditional Malay poetic forms that resonate throughout the Malay world (dunia Melayu) link Kepri economically and politically with Singapore and Malaysia.
In one of the most provocative chapters in the book, Rommel Curaming mounts a persuasive critique of the mainstream ‘consensus’ definition by scholars of the Malay world that ignores Filipinos as Malay. The scholarship emphasises the aggregates and generalities of Malay people largely in terms of geography. But cultural affinity with Malays and self-definition as Malay has been important for Filipinos for centuries. Curaming urges scholars of Malayness to be more sensitive to power relations, elisions of history, instrumentalism, naturalisation, and hegemony that have excluded Filipinos from the discourse about Melayu.
Hendrik M.J. Maier's beautifully written chapter uses Melayu to explore notions of difference (in language, identity, culture, history, and social organisation). He describes how Dutch and British scholarship of the early 1800s ‘created and delineated “the Malays” rather than representing and describing “people”’ (p. 307). Maier focuses on the ‘master narrative’ of British writer William Marsden whose conclusions were taken as truth, rather than as conjectures (ibid.). Through Marsden and the tales in Hikayat Hang Tuah, Maier explores the paradoxes of how the Malay language can be coterminous with ethnicity or nation, and yet open and flexible enough to assimilate ambiguity and difference (p. 312). Spreading out rhizomically, Melayu represents heterogeneity rather than containment (p. 321). Malayness is an ongoing ‘performance’ of social relations through the Malay language.
This volume adds valuable new perspectives to Melayu studies by focusing on Malayness in the margins. The book illuminates previously understudied groups in Malay studies (orang Asli, Peranakan, and Filipinos) as well as Sufis, political rebels, and women. It convincingly demonstrates that Melayu persists and thrives in contemporary culture. Further, it shows that Malayness has important stakes for ordinary people. It is real, albeit unstable. For these reasons, Melayu: The Politics, Poetics and Paradoxes of Malayness is a wonderful and welcome addition to the literature on Melayu.
