http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/2008/12/origin-of-ketuanan-melayumalay.html
By Dr Azly Rahman
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Cinematography and special effects ala George Lucas and Steven Spielberg or Hong Kongs’s Golden Harvest production have made it possible to give modern viewers a better and more engaging sense of what heroism and tribalism means.
Pages from Sejarah Melayu/Malay Annals can be made to come alive with good acting and film editing. A sense of tribalism and etnocentrism can be inculcated in a people by presenting to viewers which, among the warring tribes, are the best. In this case, Melakka is a more powerful kingdom than Java. Media representation of heroism in Melakkan times favours the Malay warrior. The defeat, decapacitation, and demise of the best warrior of the Other-tribe/Tribal-Other signifies the vainglorifying of another. The victory of the Africa-American boxer Muhammad Ali over the Caucasian boxer Joe Bugner in an Asian city, Kuala Lumpur, signifies the triumph of Black over white against the backdrop of decolonization of the 1970s.
The ideology of Ketuanan Melayu/Malay superiority based and superstructured in Malay feudalism, the concept of kerajaan, and supernatural powers derived from a syncreticism of Islam and traditional/folk religion derived from Hindu-Buddhist tradition — all these became a geneological basis of Ketuanan Melayu.
The keris becomes a representation of a weapon of mass ideological construction or even destruction. In times of Melakka, The Taming Sari is the magical weapon highly acclaimed; in 21st. century Melakka, the keris is a highly criticized symbol of political party. The mind of the observer of the keris — from Ancient to Modern Melakka — has evolved. Cognitive science, critical sensibility, and a move towards cosmopolitasm have educated the mind of the difference between culture and consciousness of the 1400s and that of 2000.
The Malay culture continues to be deconstructed and reconstructed; evident from the denouncing of Tun Sri Lanang (author of Sejarah Melayu) as a well-paid agent propagateur of Malay feudalism to the hard-hitting criticisms of Ketuanan Melayu in Malaysian cyberspace. Multiple voices of multiculturalism are in unison mounting the attack on this sign, symbols, and signifier of Malay dominance.
From being Grand Narrative, the Malay culture has transformed into a multiplicity of Sublaterns, affected by the transcultural flow of the logic of capitalism in its Rostowin stages. The Malay dilemma is economic and ideological in nature. Class is lending more prominence than race in the analysis of Malay cognitive and sociological evolution. Neo-feudalism reigns neatly hidden in modern-day inscriptions, individuals, ideology, and institutions, and installations.
The Malay-Javanese Fight:
The Ali-Bugner Fight: