Colonial Knowledge and the Construction of Malay and Malayness: Exploring the Literary Component

Shamsul Amri Baharuddin ()
Additional contact information
Shamsul Amri Baharuddin: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Chapter Chapter 4 in Contesting Malaysia’s Integration into the World Economy, 2021, pp 77-94 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter assumes an exploratory approach to examine the construction of “Malay” as ethnic category and “Malayness”. The chapter goes on to show three simple points that help with this construction. Firstly, that the literary component is an integral part of each of the colonial investigative modalities. Secondly, that combined with other facts, data, ethnographic and material culture artifact, knowledge on native literature classify, categorize, consolidate, and objectify a particular social and give it an ethnic identity. Thirdly, such invented social groups become naturalized through the implementation of colonial policies that manipulate their existence. The chapter makes the point that “colonial knowledge” shall continue to be the most powerful form of knowledge that ever existed, but has increasingly less recognized as it never has been systematically analyzed or questioned as long as it is the source of power and legitimacy for the post-colonial state.

Keywords: Colonial knowledge; Malay; Ethnography; Cultural artifact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-16-0650-2_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811606502

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-0650-2_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().