Modern Malay Thoughts : Negotiation and Construction

本研究以思想史的视角，追溯自十八世纪末至今的“马来人”、“马来亚”、“马来西亚”思想史，探讨马来西亚民族认同的形成。马来西亚作为“多民族社会”的主导形象的形成经历了两个阶段。第一阶段与十九世纪中叶以来英国殖民管理的进展有关。当时，马来半岛（Malaya）是作为一个有意义的空间构成的。然而，移民社区并没有被视为马来亚的组成部分，因此在第一阶段没有形成“多民族社会”的话语。第二阶段开始于第二次世界大战后，英国提出马来亚联邦计划，美国为建立霸权而推进区域研究。“多元社会”的概念出现并成为马来亚（后来的马来西亚）的主要代表。正是在这个阶段，马来人、华人和印度人被话语建构为同质的族群，马来亚获得了“多民族社会”的主要代表。然而，融合到多民族马来西亚的国家话语的过程同时涉及到与异质“他者”的谈判过程，这从主导话语的形成中被移除。对马来半岛作为有意义空间的自明性和族群同质性提出质疑和质疑的不仅是泛马来思想家，还有所谓的保守思想家。在谈判过程中，他们含蓄地提出了质疑民族国家边界概念的异质“他者”，以及目前马来西亚的替代可能性。

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.