Negotiating difference: The trope of anak derhaka and ideological endings in Bruneian writings

Abstract

In a quantitative analysis of themes explored in the creative writing classes at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, it was found that over 60 per cent of all writings dealt with the parent–child relationship, with many dealing specifically with the trope of the anak derhaka, or unfilial child. A closer look at the anak derhaka texts showed that their endings almost invariably showcased a formulaic trajectory that punished the unfilial child and restored family order. This article examines the significance of this recurring trope and its inevitable ending in the context of Brunei Darussalam’s tripartite state ideology and discourse, Malay Islamic Monarchy, consisting of race, religion and political identity. By preserving the continuity of traditional Malay–Muslim worldview, this recurring trope underscores an innate desire, or anxiety, to maintain local identity and cultural values amid the chaos of external, global pressures and events. At the same time, the texts reveal a fascination with difference, or Otherness. This paper will consider how these instances of difference are negotiated, for they reveal moments of tension and ambivalence which appear to undermine the state discourse even as the texts move toward the “correct”, closed endings.

Introduction

This paper examines the textual compulsion to revisit established discourses in the form of ideological endings through the trope of anak derhaka or “unfilial child” in the creative writings of university students in Brunei Darussalam (hereafter Brunei). In 2009, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) began offering creative writing classes in English as part of the English Literature and Drama Studies programmes. Typically 75–90 per cent of the classes are composed of female undergraduates aged between 19–22 years, all of whom had grown up in Brunei, with the majority from a Malay–Muslim background. Although English is the main medium in these classes, students are encouraged to use bilingualism and colloquial expressions in order to retain the cultural integrity of their lived experiences. It is through these writings that we first observed the recurring theme of filial parent–child relations. For instance, out of the 28 scripts received in the playwriting class from 2010 to 2012, 17 explored the parent–child relationship, with seven focusing specifically on the filial/unfilial child. This trope also appeared in the “Life Writing” module, in which six out of nine students framed the filial relationship as the crux of the story.

Upon closer scrutiny, we found that the majority followed a formulaic trajectory that led to a conclusive ending: either the disloyal or unfilial child is punished by familial and/or divine will, or s/he submits to the parents’ wishes and family order is restored. The recurring thematic and textual patterns raise several intriguing questions: why does the anak derhaka trope keep coming up? Why does it end in such a specific, determined, and conclusive way? Is there an ideological significance attached to these “closed” endings, and indeed the formulaic pattern in which the narratives are played out? What does it say when students are reluctant to negotiate the trope in a different direction? And what do these textual compulsions and repetitions reveal in terms of the Bruneian psyche? To answer these questions, we will analyse three student plays submitted as part of their module requirements: The Occupation (hereafter TO), Through the Lens (hereafter TL), and Jasmine. These scripts remain unpublished and unperformed, and are chosen for their varying explorations of the anak derhaka trope through the theme of trangressive romantic love.

Using related theories of Foucault and Althusser, we will examine the significance of these questions by considering the national ideology and state discourse of Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB), or Malay Islamic Monarchy, which is key to our understanding of how the trope functions through the state’s prescribed views on filial relations and family values. As a state discourse, MIB interpellates gendered subjects through the imaginary and discursive binds between the individual and his/her family and society. Foucault’s observation of discourse as constituting “the rules of [subject] formation” (1972/2004: 42) emphasizes the manner in which MIB produces individuals as subjects whose identities are regulated by the ideological rules and boundaries operating within the social institutions of family, religion, school, and so on. These institutions not only govern social behaviour through practices of inclusion and exclusion, but also discipline the subject by associating guilt with deviance from the norm. Those who act against the established rules are punished accordingly, thereby revealing the power/knowledge structures that underlie conceptions of self and identity. Furthermore, the repetitive structure of the anak derhaka trope and its compulsive reinforcement of MIB confirm the psychological processes of an interpellated subjectivity at work. Althusser’s postulation that ideology produces subjects through interpellation (1971) can be seen in these writings and their insistent desire for stability and certainty, a desire that is intensified by the fear of difference, or Otherness, and its perceived dangers to MIB as a way of life. Tensions are thus highlighted by the texts’ discursive negotiations with difference through the figure of the unfilial child; in many stories, difference is represented as foreign, deviant, or non-conformist, and viewed as a threat to the security and cohesion of MIB boundaries both from within and without.

Nevertheless, in reading these plays as “end-determined fictions” (Kermode, 1967: 6), or fictions whose trajectory is dictated by the non-negotiable ending, one should also consider their purpose, which is less about the inevitability of the ending than it is about the various pathways which must be mediated in order to arrive at the necessary conclusion. The negotiation of difference is essential to our analysis of these pathways for it allows us to understand how the plays, by engaging the MIB discourse, envision the anak derhaka trope in an increasingly modernized and globalized context, and why endings are resolved in a specific manner. We will argue that at certain points of the negotiation, textual fractures or fissures appear to subvert the ideological imperatives of MIB, and indeed, the very certainty or stability aimed for by these texts. Not only do these textual cracks demonstrate Foucalt’s microphysics of power (in other words, power as fragmented and dispersed), but they also affirm the instability of the constructed nature of subject-positions and identities within discourse. Judith Butler, in developing Foucaultian concepts in her work on gender identity and performativity, stresses that identity is subject to flux and change; it is only “tenuously constituted” and “produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity” (1990: 147). Although identity is a repetitive process of signification, its very instability also holds the possibility of disruption to the discourse: “What we might call ‘agency’ or ‘freedom’ or ‘possibility’, is produced by gaps opened by the regulatory norms in the process of their self-repetition” (Butler, cited in Cornell, 1993: 4). In the plays, the textual disruptions or gaps occur in the performative spaces of the unspoken, in the form of body language, ellipses, and silences. These fissures not only herald the opening of liminal sites where the negotiation of difference takes place, but the manner in which these scripts engage the liminal possibilities is also a profound statement on how difference, and the unfilial child, are imagined and dealt with in the Bruneian context.

Contexts: MIB and anak derhaka

A small Islamic monarchy located in northern Borneo, Brunei is a plural society ruled by Malays who form the majority at 70 per cent. Bruneian Malays are collectively identified as Muslims, a racial–religious identity signifier that is reified at state level through the national, tripartite ideology of MIB. Three components are deemed essential to the construction of national identity and culture: 1) Malay values, traditions, and language, 2) the teachings of Islam, and 3) a monarchical government with the Sultan as head of the State. Although MIB is formally institutionalized through state policies and apparatuses that regulate all sectors of society, it is deeply-rooted in the collectivist traditions and cultural history of Bruneian Malays (Low, 2011). MIB is thus a political expression of age-old ritual traditions and customs already in practice within social spaces, and reproduced through interactive family and communal networks, also known as cara Brunei (the Bruneian way of life). As a result, MIB is as much embedded within social and cultural consciousness as it is within the national imaginary.

The intrinsic collectivist nature of Bruneian society and identity is highlighted by the privileging of communal duties or responsibilities over the interests or rights of the individual. As identities and subjectivities are discursively shaped by strong affiliation bonds to the group, there is a need to belong to and be integrated into the larger whole. Furthermore, the Bruneian preference “to do things together in the spirit of a ‘happy family’” (Low, 2011: 28) underscores the importance of social unity and order, where the “We” takes precedence over the individual “I”. In order to preserve harmonious group relations, conflict resolution is achieved through indirect social practices of mediation, compromise, and avoidance of confrontation (Black, 2001; Low, 2008); such peaceful means of resolving disputes are further “attributed to the practice of Islam and Islamic values” (Low, 2008: 112). The fact that Bruneians “are encouraged to settle their problems […] in a familial way” (Low, 2008: 109) is important to our discussion for it reaffirms the family as a potent symbol of social order, through which the MIB discourse is perpetuated and sustained. Since conformity and submission to the group is vital to maintaining familial and communal relationships, individuals are exhorted to adhere “to proper behaviour or halus [by] respecting rank and status, and deferring to those with higher status” (Black, 2001: 5). Within the family system, hierarchical relations and roles are clearly defined and strictly observed, with age, gender, and bloodlines acting as fixed identity markers of rank and subject-position. It is also through these strong emotional bonds and collectivist practices that filial piety toward parents and elders is both nurtured and reinforced in Bruneian society.

It is against this background that the trope of anak derhaka is validated by MIB as an integral marker of Malay identity, worldview, and cara Brunei. Historically, the trope can be traced back to Nakhoda Manis, a Malay legend whose popularity is both national and regional with similar, albeit localized, versions taking place in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In the legend, the titular Nakhoda Manis leaves home and his loving mother to seek his fortune. Years later, Manis returns as a wealthy merchant with a beautiful wife on a rich vessel. When he finds his mother, he hardly recognizes the woman, who has become poor and aged through the performing of pious works, and turns away from her in disgust. As he orders his vessel to leave, his mother rows after him in a fisherman’s boat. When she approaches the vessel, Manis’s wife asks who she is. Manis pretends he does not know, and shouts at his mother to leave. His mother, stunned and angered by this betrayal, prays for him to be punished. A divinely ordered thunderstorm breaks out and the vessel sinks, drowning Manis, who has since become the iconic unfilial child of the Malay archipelago.

Steeped in Malay folklore and history, the tale resonates with cherished cultural values: filial piety, and deference to age and position. Since the deep respect of parents and authority is extended to include “the elderly, the State, religion and the Monarch” (Low, 2008: 117) in Brunei, Manis’s tale supports the state narratives of submission and conformity to the Sultanate and its dictates. This is not especially difficult given that the majority of Bruneians, as interpellated subjects, already perceive and imagine the Sultan as a father figure, “the provider, caring and showing concern for their welfare and wellbeing” (Low, 2011: 16). By re-imagining the nation as a family and the Sultan as head of that family, the state legitimizes the authority of the parent on a national and ideological level; more specifically, it privileges the father figure as the one with the highest rank and authority in the family and state hierarchy, an important point to our analysis of gender relations in the plays. ¹ With the family unit acting as a micro-entity of the state, all challenges to parental authority are significantly refigured as a transgression against the state, since unfilial children are ultimately disloyal to the very values espoused by MIB. Furthermore, the national value placed upon parents is reified by the high status conferred on them in Islam, thereby bringing all aspects of the tripartite identity together in the preservation of parental authority under MIB. The locally-revered verse from the Qur’an below is revealing of the Bruneian psyche:

Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him, and that you be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honour. (Qur’an, 17:23)

In view of the injunction above, Manis’s actions are considered triply transgressive. By rejecting his mother, he symbolically rejects the imperatives central to MIB as a state discourse: authority of parenthood, age, and religiosity. Furthermore, the fact that it is Manis’s journey away from his “mother” land that changes him for the worse underlines the implicit threat posed by the Other, or difference. As the legend stresses, the “dangers […] come from external influences” that threaten “the way we live” (Awang, 2013: 45).

Under the regulating gaze of MIB, the threat of external, and imminently corrupting, influences are most visibly dealt with by entrenched censorship apparatuses, including “the power to arbitrarily shut down media outlets” and to jail citizens “for up to three years” for “portraying the country in a negative light” or touching on “sensitive” issues (Bandial, 2013: n.p.). All published literature is vetted by a censorship board which does not provide clear official guidelines for what may or may not be included in a text, relying on reactive rather than proactive lines. To date, local literary production remains nascent; ² the low output can be ascribed to the stringent policing of texts, the lack of financial support, and low readership numbers. Not surprisingly, Bruneian writers are increasingly turning to the internet to showcase their work as it remains, for the most part, unregulated by the government. ³ With this in mind, it becomes clear that the study of “unofficial” or unsanctioned literature is central to our understanding of Bruneian literature, both in terms of the quantity of available material, as well as its marginalized position. ⁴ Still, the strength of the MIB ideology in the national consciousness means that a certain amount of self-regulation will continue to influence both private and public acts of expression. As Bandial (2013: n.p.) observes: “we live in constant fear. Fear of overstepping the invisible line in the sand that defines what we can or cannot say”.

Despite its fear of the perceived threat posed by external influences, or difference, Brunei — like many Southeast Asian countries — is experiencing flux and change in the shape of modernization and globalization. It has widespread access to the outside world via cable television and internet, while blogging, social networking, and YouTube are popular among youths. Consequently, Bruneians have become much more exposed to global events and foreign (mainly American and British) media, images, and influences. At the same time, Brunei is an affluent society due to its rich oil and gas economy; its wealth is displayed by consumers who indulge in the latest car models, communication gadgets, and fashionable media hardware and software. Moreover, the country’s stronghold on traditional exclusivity is countered by its dependence on the oil and gas sector. To meet the national goals of economic development and social prosperity, Brunei has had to embrace Western technological, scientific, and digital knowledge, and the international language of English. ⁵ In line with these goals, Brunei pragmatically implemented a bilingual education policy in 1985 which employs both English and Malay as the languages of instruction (Haji-Othman, 2012). Although a second language, English is so widely used that bilingual code-mixing and code-switching have occurred at all levels of social discourse, albeit to varying degrees of fluency (Ożóg, 1996). Additionally, English is perceived as an identifying marker of class, education, and wealth. Despite the relative ease with which English has been accepted and integrated into Bruneian life, it is still perceived as “different”, foreign. Bruneians emotionally distance themselves from English by viewing it as a functional, communicative link with the outside world (Chin, 2007) while Malay remains the beloved mother tongue, or “language of the soul” (Haji-Othman, 2012: 181), which can authentically capture and express their innermost selves. Nevertheless, the state’s continuing efforts to defend Malay as the national language, seen in the propaganda of Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa (language is the soul of the race), and its increasingly fierce resistance to bahasa rojak (mixed language) underscores a real and present fear of the threat posed by Otherness (Kamit, 2012; Shahminan, 2010).

Brunei then is a study of contrasts and paradoxes: on the one hand, Bruneians desire to preserve MIB and cara Brunei; on the other hand, they cannot do without the material wealth that is associated with the sources of their anxiety and discomfort, those “foreign”, decadent influences of the West: these include out-of-wedlock pregnancy, drug addiction, and divorce, themes that have been explored in our students’ writings. Much of this ambivalence toward difference has contributed to the conflicting tensions that underpin the textual narratives and their examination of changing perceptions and identities through the filial/unfilial parent–child paradigm, in which the older generation, or parents, are represented as the guardians of MIB traditions and cara Brunei, while the younger, modernizing generation, or children, are more open to experimenting with difference. By juxtaposing generational disparities and gaps, these writings explore the contesting and competing discourses between spiritual faith and material wealth, tradition and modernity, local imperatives and global pressures, Asia and the West. As our analysis will show, these opposing attitudes and viewpoints toward difference significantly reveal a paradoxical fear for, and fear of, MIB as a state ideology and discourse: the older generation who fear for the fragility of MIB strive to protect its boundaries, while the younger generation reveals a fear of MIB and the consequences of breaking the rules. Yet this dichotomy, while instructive, is not as clear-cut as it appears. The fear of MIB displayed by the younger generation is complicated by their ingrained approval of the ideology, even when their own personal desires clash with certain aspects of it. It is also noteworthy that while the strength of this approval is not enough to overcome their personal desires completely, it is strong enough to make them believe that their actions are unfilial, and that their desires are transgressive in nature, a fault within themselves. These complex points of contention also constitute the liminal spaces where textual fissures and cracks appear, as characters mediate the differing meanings and knowledges that articulate their gender and/or sexual identities, subjectivities and subject-positions in the national imaginary.

Negotiating difference: Textual fissures and ideological subversions

As mentioned earlier, three student plays have been chosen for their varying discursive negotiations and degrees of compliance to MIB norms and dogma. Written by female students, these scripts reveal a preoccupation with gender politics as they explore the anak derhaka trope through the theme of transgressive romantic love, in which the act of loving an inappropriate person — a foreigner in TO, a drug addict in Jasmine, and a homosexual object of desire in TL — is forbidden. The concept of romantic love is a relatively modern one. With the exposure to global, in particular Western, media images and popular representations, romance has become popular among Bruneian youths. This development is contrasted with traditional heterosexual relationships, which are usually formed through arranged marriages, a cultural practice which still thrives in Brunei (Roslan and Masli, 2008). In the arranged marriage, the choice of spouse is made by the parents or older generation with the child’s agreement; in return, the child receives his/her parents’ blessing for upholding his/her filial duty through conformity to the tradition. While love-based relationships and marriages are quite common today, children are still required to obtain parental blessing, failing which, they will be seen as unfilial or disloyal. Hence the romantic relationship actually mediates both the traditional family discourse and the modern sensibilities of the increasingly Westernized, and globalized, Bruneian.

All three plays begin with the threat of conflict and subversion through the aberrant love/desire of the gendered subjects who fail to obtain parental approval or blessing. However, as the narratives unfold, the threats are diminished and/or eliminated as the unfilial children are either punished or pushed to conform to prescribed identities and roles. Either way, there is an inexorable movement toward one possible conclusion at the end: submission to the authority of parents/family and MIB. Within this framework, several dichotomous themes are played out: old/new, local/foreign, insider/outsider, private/public, personal desire/collective duty. These binaries not only underline the complex dynamics and tensions involved in the students’ mediation between past and present, tradition and modernity, local and global, but they also reveal a strong concern with MIB boundaries, be it in the form of preservation, resistance, even ambivalence, through the recurring motifs of inclusion and exclusion. These discursive boundaries also posit the performative and liminal sites of engagement where gender and sexual identities and subjectivities, subject-positions, and agentic possibilities are negotiated. Of the three plays, TO is most unambiguous in its submission to the disciplinary forces of MIB, while Jasmine and TL are more ambivalent in their treatment of family relations and individual conformity to the discourse.

TO tells the story of star-crossed lovers — Salamah, a Bruneian Malay girl and Hiroshi, a Japanese soldier — set during the Japanese occupation of Brunei in the Second World War. When the affair is discovered by Salamah’s father, Pak Usop, she submits out of guilt to his desire for her to marry Mohiddin. Salamah later informs Hiroshi about her marriage, and he commits suicide in despair. In the final scene, we find Salamah and Mohiddin together as a united couple. From the start, the text establishes clear racial/cultural/religious boundaries through the forbidden relationship. As a conquering soldier, Hiroshi is immediately identified as “enemy”, an Other who endangers the ideological imperatives of MIB when he symbolically removes Salamah’s headscarf — a key identity-marker of Malay–Muslim femininity — in the opening scene. By undermining core MIB values, Hiroshi represents the perils associated with external, foreign, and imminently corrupting influences. However, the bigger danger comes in the form of Salamah’s transgressive love as it threatens to disrupt social order from within. While her deviant and disloyal actions — meeting her lover behind her father’s back, and allowing Hiroshi to remove her headscarf — express her complicit desire to explore difference, they also reveal the vulnerabilities of the MIB system and its boundaries. Pak Usop’s act of pushing her into marriage should be read as a symbolic attempt to protect the integrity of cultural and social margins, and render the threat of Otherness null and void into the bargain. At the same time, Salamah — by performing her filial duty to her father — fulfils the national ideal of the desired family unit with Mohiddin, a necessary ideological symbol of MIB’s security and longevity.

Although the danger of chaos is contained when Salamah marries Mohiddin, the play stresses that it is merely an outward act of compliance, for her subjective self remains resistant. The emotional barrier between husband and wife, evinced by Salamah’s “cold stare” and “fake smile”, reveals cracks in the marriage in the shape of unvoiced, and unresolved, tensions: Mohiddin’s disappointment that Salamah can only see him as “my duty”, and her unspeakable love for Hiroshi, the invisible “third party” in the marriage. These textual ellipses and fissures not only articulate Salamah’s struggle to conform to the traditional gender identities and subject-positions — filial daughter, dutiful wife, loyal citizen — thrust onto her, but they also suggest her ambivalence toward the family binds of filial piety and duty. Much of her ambivalence stems from her individual lack of access to choice and agency within the collective constraints of MIB, a position made worse by her gender. As a woman, Salamah is restrained by prescribed gender roles and spaces, a point made emphatic when her ambition to become a teacher, and her love for Hiroshi, remain unfulfilled, while her movements are curtailed: “Bapa (father) didn’t let me go far from the house”. In contrast, Mohiddin — as the masculine centre of his world — achieves his ambition to be a teacher, participates in the resistance against the Japanese, and marries the woman he loves. The gendered boundaries in place indicate that, despite the conflicted female subjective self, there is little space to negotiate different identities or subject-positions. In this way, Salamah’s capitulation to the discursive, collective forces of MIB is assured.

TO thus ends with a picture of family unity at the expense of personal happiness. Although Hiroshi kills himself for her sake, Salamah, despite her love for him, cannot bring herself to regret his death. In her final monologue, she focuses on her duty as daughter and wife:

I just want to be a good wife for Mohiddin. I just want to do the right things. […] I’m doing this for bapa too … I know bapa is worried about me. I know he is disappointed [in] me. Mah ani anak derhaka. I am a rebellious daughter. I just want to correct everything.

Mohiddin in the closing lines both forgives her and reiterates his love for her, and they exit “holding hands”. This show of husband–wife unity, along with her expressed desire to “correct” her unfilial behaviour as a “rebellious daughter”, allow Salamah to symbolically efface her transgressive self and reinscribe her identity and place in the MIB narrative. In the concluding scene too, she wears the headscarf that Hiroshi had earlier removed, thereby confirming her acceptance of both Mohiddin and the life he represents; significantly, she makes this choice even before she meets Hiroshi for the last time. In this sense, the text requires not only Hiroshi’s self-destruction, but also his ideological capitulation. His admission, “You are the one who no longer needs me”, implicitly acknowledges the ideological supremacy of Salamah and Mohiddin’s cultural selves over his Otherness. As such, one can read Usop and Mohiddin as both literal and metaphorical warriors for the eventual triumph of MIB over the foreign Other. Hence the “correct” ending functions to rebalance and reassert a moral viewpoint underscored by the anak derhaka trope, as the child’s filial conformity and the subsequent removal of all transgressive cultural, racial, and ideological difference from the landscape serve to reinforce the discursive boundaries of MIB. Additionally, the blessing of a parent, specifically the father figure, is crucial to the reinstatement of the status quo. As Salamah’s final monologue shows, it is her acceptance of, and dependence on, patriarchal authority and forgiveness that allows her to be brought back into the fold, proving once more the inherent gender biases at work in the system.

The second play, Jasmine, focuses on the taboo subject of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy; this time, the threat of difference comes from within MIB boundaries. Jasmine, the adopted daughter of Rina and Abdullah, returns from the UK with a Masters degree and overhears a conversation that eventually leads to the recovery of Sasha, her birth mother (who is also Rina’s sister). However, Sasha is dying from an undiagnosed illness and it is only on her deathbed that her transgression of bearing an illegitimate child is finally forgiven by her parents and family. Jasmine begins with the teenage Sasha tearfully revealing her pregnancy to her shocked parents, who represent the upper echelons of Bruneian society. Wealthy and titled, Dato and Datin engage the MIB discourse when they denounce Sasha for being “immoral, indecent, wicked”, and for bringing “shame to our family”. While Datin later “tries to defend” Sasha, Dato, “in a rage”, promptly disowns her.

In Brunei, shame acts as a “controlling regulator” (Black, 2001: 3) of potentially deviant individuals who are “taught to behave properly as to [sic] avoid any consequences which can bring shame to themselves and/or to their family” (UNESCO, 2012: 35). While shame underscores the individual’s wrong behaviour, it correspondingly affects the collective family through the loss of face or reputation, as well as social respect and standing. In Sasha’s case, shame is directly related to her failed identity and duty as a filial daughter, one who should have safeguarded her bodily purity and virtue, and obtained parental blessing for her relationship beforehand. By transgressing the moral values upheld by her parents and MIB, Sasha condemns herself to a life of shame and is expelled in order to prevent her shame from spreading to her family like an infectious disease. The effectiveness of shame as a regulator of cultural and social behaviour is reinforced by the constant policing of the MIB subject; this is seen when years later, both Dato and Datin remind Jasmine how important it is for her to “jaga [protect] our family name” and “jaga your attitude and behaviour” as “[p]eople always talk”. As a neighbour says, “Brunei is small. From end to end, people know each other”. In this sense, nothing escapes the panoptic eye of MIB as family members and citizens respectively discipline each other through the social practices of exclusion and prohibition within private and public spaces. The discursive boundaries of MIB are thus protected and maintained in this manner.

Furthermore, the text emphasizes that it is Sasha who must suffer the tragic consequences for her unfilial actions, rather than Boi, the drug addict responsible for her condition. As the “filthy” daughter who gives in to her deviant love and sexual desire, Sasha can never be forgiven and is punished accordingly through exile, poverty, and finally, an incurable illness. In the final scene, the polluted state of Sasha’s soul is literally embodied by her wasting, diseased body. In contrast, Boi — successfully rehabilitated by the authorities — returns to the good graces of society and becomes a public figure of respectability; his good health symbolically speaks of a clean slate. The burden of punishment then lies on Sasha who, in the end, must die. Only then can she be forgiven, and her rebellious difference, cancelled. At the moment of death, Sasha is reunited with her family and forgiven by her parents.

However, the temporary restoration of social order and harmony is offset by the textual tensions and fissures posed by Jasmine’s ambivalent social status as both victim and villain. While she is the innocent victim of past sins, she is simultaneously a present embodiment of those very sins, the fruit of a diseased body. The final scene serves as a moral warning of the generational consequences of unfilial action as Jasmine, the illegitimate daughter, is rejected by her boyfriend, Fendi; as the lights fade, she “falls down onto the floor and cries alone”. By representing an unresolved site of difference, a sign eternally fixed for her mother’s failure to perform her identity as a filial daughter, Jasmine must share her mother’s punishment through social isolation. Sasha and Jasmine’s exclusion from the discourse — as opposed to Boi who is allowed to re-enter society as a reformed figure — reaffirms the biased treatment of female subjects who attempt to negotiate difference and fail. As with TO, Jasmine is unable to imagine an alternative or widened sphere in which the deviant female Other can be accommodated within the collective boundaries of MIB: she either submits or is expelled/rejected. The underlying textual ambivalence and conflicting impulses suggest an innate discomfort with, and even fear of, MIB, not just for its entrenched gender politics, but also for its merciless punishment of “bad” or “unfilial” women who transgress against or pollute its margins.

Of the three plays, it is TL which is most textually ambivalent and ambiguous in its treatment of the unfilial child and difference as it engages the themes of gender and sexual identities and boundaries by examining the taboo subject of homosexuality. TL revolves around a photojournalist, Mizan, and his unspoken, forbidden feelings for his best friend, Faiq; the latter is in love with Hani, the pious “daughter of an Ustaz” (a teacher of Islam). When Mizan finally confesses his love for Faiq to Amirah (Faiq’s sister), he is overheard by his father, Haji Imran; this leads to a climactic father–son confrontation at the end, with Mizan choosing to leave Brunei for the UK. The emphasis on difference is stronger in TL than in TO or Jasmine as much of the textual tension stems from the ambivalent play on multiple contesting binaries: Asian/Western, tradition/modernity, spiritual/material.

Framed by the discourse of “correct” gender norms and sexual relations, represented by Faiq and Hani and the older generation (their parents), Mizan is positioned as Other through his “unnatural”, feminized, and homosexual love. Since he is more closely aligned with the deviant elements of Westernized, Mizan highlights the tensions prevalent in the negotiation of prescribed MIB identities and family values. Juxtaposed against Faiq’s “natural”, masculine, and heterosexual desire for Hani, Mizan’s difference is telling from the start. His excluded and alienated subject-position is attested by his introductory monologue, and reaffirmed by his peripheral role as a photojournalist, an observer on the outside looking in, “through the lens” of his camera. Despite his conflicted subjectivity, Mizan knows he can never come out of the closet since nothing can upset the status quo: “you see the story behind the lens but you can’t change whatever is happening”. In contrast, Faiq and Hani embody the “correct” MIB values which Mizan struggles with. By reproducing the normative gender relations, and by obtaining the requisite parental blessing before becoming engaged, both Faiq and Hani symbolically perform their identities and duty as filial children who will continue to perpetuate the desired state discourse of family.

Mizan’s failed identity and duty as a filial son is thus visualized in the concluding scene, when he is denounced by his furious father: “KAU BUKAN ANAK KU … KELUAR!” [You’re not my son … leave!]. With the support of his stunned mother, Mizan tries to plead with his father but the latter remains implacable: “Don’t call me bapa … I am not your bapa!” Mizan apologizes once more, but Haji Imran leaves the room. Mizan then apologizes to his mother and “walks out of the door”, leaving her speechless, and staring “at the open door”. The ending of TL, as with TO and Jasmine, is invariably predicated upon the expulsion of difference — Mizan — from the discourse; this time however, the expulsion is self-initiated, a choice that is exercised rather than imposed. Still, it is important to note that Mizan, as an unfilial son rather than daughter, is able to negotiate his own expulsion, unlike Salamah, Sasha, and Jasmine who remain trapped in the system with little choice in the matter. By choosing to preserve the purity of MIB boundaries through exile, Mizan implicitly acknowledges the necessity of his removal from Brunei, recognizing that there is no space for his transgressive sexual self as it constitutes a betrayal of the filial duty and moral values demanded by his parents and MIB. Yet the ending is not as clear-cut as it appears, especially when one considers that Mizan’s exile can be reconfigured as escape. Paradoxically too, Mizan’s choice can be viewed as a threat to the discourse. This is made explicit by the textual gap, belied by the metaphorical “open door” through which Mizan leaves, and his hesitant promise to “come visit one day”. Not only does this metaphor constitute the liminal space where the negotiation of difference can continue take place, it also heralds the subversive possibility of free movement in and out of the MIB landscape.

Equally subversive is the manner in which Mizan’s mother, Hajah Jamilah, briefly betrays her anxiety when she cries, “If you go, who is going to take care of us?” Although she complies with her husband’s decision to uphold the law, Jamilah displays both fear and resistance by pointing out the flaw in it — that a policy of expulsion reduces the very generation who is expected to carry the tradition forward. This ambivalent and conflicted emotional moment brings to light the disjunctures and fissures that exist, not just in the performative, liminal spaces of the text, but also in the discourse. In the end, the play takes care to mitigate the threat of subversion by subjugating Jamilah’s yearning toward mercy to Imran’s greater desire for justice. The ending thus remains staunchly traditional as both mother and son abide by the father’s decision: Jamilah’s anguished voice is silenced, while Mizan — as the unfilial son and polluting substance — is removed completely from the ideological space that is anchored by Faiq and Hani’s successful relationship.

Conclusion

By engaging the MIB ideology and discourse through multiple dichotomies — local/global, Asian/Western, tradition/modernity, spiritual/material, the anak derhaka narratives inform us of the various discursive mechanisms operating in the national and social spaces of Brunei. Using the recurring motifs of inclusion and exclusion, each play relays a similar message: the unfilial child must conform or be punished; if the latter, the punishment functions as both a means of justice as well as a visible deterrent for potential transgressors. As for those who repent, forgiveness, while desirable, may be impotent, especially for female subjects whose social status may never be reinstated. Moreover, these plays reveal complex tensions and ambivalent impulses that underscore the imagination and negotiation of Otherness even as they explore ideas of gendered and sexual identities, subjectivities, individual agency and choice. Much of the conflict is couched in terms of generational and gender differences, which are reinforced by MIB’s valorization of parenthood, specifically, the paternalistic and patriarchal authority of the father. It is the father who acts mainly as regulator of the MIB discourse, the gatekeeper who guards the purity and cohesion of its boundaries. It is the father who disowns his unfilial child, as seen in Jasmine and TL, or withholds forgiveness until the child repents and conforms accordingly, as in TO. In contrast, the mother fulfils her function as the more compassionate, nurturing figure, such as Datin in Jasmine and Jamilah in TL; they are the ones who forgive first, and more readily. This establishes once more that gender politics not only operate at the heart of MIB but also, as our analysis has shown, affect the negotiations of identity and difference in the plays.

At the same time, the plays reflect an innate desire to explore difference as they flirt with the possibilities and desirability of the Other through the themes of romantic love and carnal desire. Yet these entanglements remain ephemeral and intangible, for they cannot be allowed to pollute the envisioned society of the texts. In short, our students’ writings are self-regulating in their insistence on the closed, and “correct”, ending, even within the relatively safe and unregulated space of the classroom. It is equally notable that this preoccupation with closed endings manifests itself only in writings set in Brunei. In writings set in a Western context, endings can be ambiguous, unresolved, and morally uncertain. This pattern indicates that our students can, or only wish to, conceive of alterities outside of the Bruneian context. Their inability to negotiate any other outcome thus suggests a foreclosure of imaginative agency, for even within the liminal textual space that represents their imagined worlds, the students are unable to break free. One reason for this foreclosure may be due to a lifetime of self-censorship and internalization of MIB, and yet, this argument is not that simple, for there exists a healthy respect and admiration for MIB as the state discourse and national ideology.

Ultimately, the inevitable endings show that the preservation of the status quo remains an important and recurrent concern of the students, and that the struggle to reconcile difference with these endings is not always a simplistic one. Between the pull toward the globalized Other and the traditions inculcated since youth, the plays paradoxically reveal an unwillingness to relinquish cherished values inasmuch as they acknowledge the desirability of all that lies beyond the nation’s boundaries. For the time being, MIB remains paramount. It remains to be seen how this negotiation will evolve with the flux of globalization and modernization.