The meaning of race in Malaysia: Colonial,post-colonial and possible new conjunctures

Abstract

New transitions – and tensions – in Malaysian society have created a much-needed space for critical reflection on the meaning of race. They have also provided the impetus to rethink the dominant paradigm shaping Malaysian studies. This article begins this discussion by situating race within three frameworks that give it meaning – state, academic and people-centred discourse from the nation's cultural margins. These discourses are then viewed in terms of conjunctures or temporal formations. The state-driven paradigm of pluralism, as manifested in the separate and separable ‘Malay’/‘Chinese’/‘Indian’/ ‘Others’ (MCIO) racial categorizations, has its origins in British colonialism. It is deeply embedded in policies and practices and also integrated into formal structures and institutions. Although these categories of race and naming have begun to lose much of their salience on the ground, they continue to be mobilized by the state and other hegemonic non-state actors as a primary marker of difference and differentiation between groups. Equally disconcerting is the fact that even academic discourse is also largely conducted within the epistemological and ontological bases of colonialist knowledge production. Since state and other non-state actors who benefit from dominant paradigms have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining them, and tend to resist reform, this article argues that it is imperative that the attempt to think critically about race is done at, from, and through the site of conceptual disjuncture between ‘how we are represented’ and ‘how we might represent ourselves’. This rupture must be seen as a seminal point of departure for knowledge construction. The article concludes with a consideration of the role of the researcher in its critical trajectory to track ‘where we are, how we got here and where we can go from here’.