Description
Book SynopsisOvercoming Passion examines the passion for race in contemporary Malaysia. Broadly the essays look at the disjunction between the falsity of race as a scientific category and the entrenched belief that race determines one's rightful identity. They probe the ways in which individual minds and institutions of power fail or refuse to recognise and act in accordance with the knowledge that race exists only insofar as its existence is sustained by the believer's belief in it. The contributors draw from a burgeoning but under-examined archive of Malaysia-related social texts, ranging from media and technological discourse, popular culture and literary production to historical writings, produced originally in English, Malay and Mandarin Chinese.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Overcoming Passions for Race and Community - David C.L. Lim A Case of Mistaken Identities? Retelling Malaysia's National Story - Suvendrini K. Perera The Rejected Imagination in the Poetry of Fang Ang, Fu Chengde and Chen Qianghua - Gabriel Wu From Fragmented Identities to Post-Identity: Lin Xingqian's Poetics of Diaspora - Tee Kim Tong "Why aren't you a Muslim"? Pride and Prejudice through Gunawan Mahmood's Teen Fiction - David C.L. Lim Looking through the Corridor: Malaysia and the MSC - Susan Leong The Ideological Fantasy of British Malaya: A Postcolonial Reading of Swettenham, Clifford and Burgess - Daniel P.S. Goh Globalisation and Bangsa Malaysia Discourse in Racial Crisis - Mohan Ambikaipaker "Your memories are our memories": Remembering Culture as Race in Malaysia and K.S. Maniam's Between Lives - David C.L. Lim A Passion for Other Lovers: Rewriting the "Other" in Ooi Yang-May's Fictionalisation of Multiethnic Malaysia - Tamara S. Wagner About the Editor and Contributors
