Modern Malay Thoughts : Negotiation and Construction

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This study traces the history of thoughts on "Malay","Malaya" and "Malaysia" from the late eighteenth century up until now and explores the formation of national identity in Malaysia from the viewpoint of intellectual history. The predominant image of Malaysia as "a multi-ethnic society" was formed in two stages. The first stage was associated with the progress of British colonial administration since the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, the Malay Peninsular(Malaya) was constituted as a meaningful space. Yet, the immigrant communities were not perceived as the components of Malaya so that the discourse of "a multi-ethnic society" was not formed in the first stage. The second stage started after the World War II when Britain suggested the plan of Malayan Federation and the United States promoted area studies for the establishment of its hegemony. The concept of "plural society" emerged and became predominant in representing Malaya(later Malaysia). It was at this stage when the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians were discursively constructed as homogeneous ethnic groups and Malaya obtained the predominant representation of "a multi-ethnic society". However, the process that was converged on the national discourse of a multi-ethnic Malaysia simultaneously involved the process of negotiation with the heterogeneous "others", which was removed from the formation of dominant discourse. It is not only the Pan-Malay thinkers but also the so-called conservative thinkers who have questioned and problematized the self-evidence of the Malay Peninsula as a meaningful space and the homogeneity of ethnic groups. In the process of negotiation, they implicitly suggested the heterogeneous "others" that question the concept of boundaries of nation states as well as the alternative possibilities to the present Malaysia.