Globalization And Bangsa Malaysia Discourse In Racial Crisis

Chapter Summary

The study of Malaysia's multiethnic social dynamics has long been beholden to frameworks bequeathed by Orientalist epistemological regimes, such as Furnivall's &t;plural society&t; thesis which conceives of &t;race&t; in Malaysia as an ontological and primordial feature of society, an illiberal &t;passion&t; so-to-speak, characteristic of a pre-modern non-West. In more recent turns in European social theory, deconstructive and postmodern tendencies have critiqued essentialised categories of identity and framed cultural hybridity and transcendent subject-potential as the privileged object of poststructural agency. The cultural studies project, which examines race not as a ?passion? but as material-ideological discourse, allows us to open a necessary horizon of intervention. The globalization-linked restructuring of production in Malaysia corresponds with the official emergence of neoliberal Bangsa Malaysia nation-building discourse by the state.

Keywords: Bangsa Malaysia; globalization; racial crisis