Abstract
This essay synthesizes the work of Raymond Williams and Hayden White with a view to investigating the use of the sublime in two novels written by Malaysian author Tash Aw. It argues that, as a mode of historical emplotment, the sublime draws together the aesthetic and the political. In Aw’s texts it is used to enact experiential goals, to create “structures of feeling” that register the continuity between individual and group experience. Such usage prompts a consideration of the eventual irruptions of the collective will seen especially in anti-colonial and revolutionary contexts. By threading their plots through commonplace experiences of love and friendship and through encounters with “real-life” historical figures (Lai Teck, Sukarno), Aw’s texts provide structures of feeling which seek to alter our conceptual geography. While they promote considerations that derive in part from the politics of recognition, they also help to underwrite an internationalism worthy of the name.