WP4: Writing About Writing

None of my papers ended up the way I initially envisioned them to. In fact, by the time I was done with my WP1 — itself having gone through several major revisions which saw me pivot to an entirely different thesis partway through — I still had no idea what I wanted to explore for the next paper, much less my WP3. And while it was stressful at times to write aimlessly without necessarily knowing where my argument was culminating to, it also allowed me to explore themes that I wouldn’t have dared to otherwise. The first draft of my WP1 was about microtransactions in video games, which subsequently transformed into a paper about the commodification of Chinese-Malaysian culture; by the end of the semester I had further dived into the history of my hometown through interviews with my grandparents, which tipped me into investigating the dynamics of multiculturalism and the contestation of ethnic narratives in Malaysia.

In the midst of brainstorming for my WP1, I wrote in a blog post on my Substack that I was struggling to identify what captured my interests enough to sustain a semester-long study. In retrospect, my WP1 was an attempt in discovering what I was passionate about. That it turned out to be a piece on the lasting tradition of the lion dance perhaps speaks to an innate curiosity regarding the cultural context I grew up in. The Chinese-Malaysian community had always prided itself on its preservation of tradition and religion, especially compared to China itself, but I wanted to know what that truly entailed when situated within the 21st century and its neoliberalist societies. While my essay largely focused on the lion dance itself, it did force me to reckon with Penang’s changing landscapes, as well as the role capitalism and other state functions had played in its preservation or lack thereof. This was the first time I had formally written down my thoughts on the gentrification of my hometown as I saw it. Yet attempting to research this issue also exposed a larger gap in Malaysian literature, where Penang’s history had predominantly been recorded in English only by foreign correspondents, while local Malay and Chinese sources are poorly archived and inaccessible.

What better way to learn more about your hometown’s history than interviewing the people who had lived there? I started out wanting to ask my grandparents what their views on Penang’s cultural history and gentrification was, but as the interview progressed I got increasingly interested in the untold immigrant stories and everyday life in that era of Penang. As I had mentioned in my WP2, my key takeaway from the interview and the subsequent write-up was the erasure of these stories and the history of immigrants and other “unsavory” groups who had been crucial to the prosperity of the city today. Understanding my family’s history gave me a newfound connection to my hometown; it’s a part of history that deserves to be remembered alongside what we have already chosen to immortalize.

I had, of course, intended to work my grandparents’ narrative into my WP3. But while pondering about the erasure of narratives and the formation of myths in not just Penang but Malaysia as a whole, I found myself drawn to the May 13 race riots and its associated narratives. Even during the interview, I had for a split second thought about asking my grandparents what it was like living through that event, but decided otherwise; my unconscious fear and the unspoken tabooness of it all made me hesitate.

At the core of May 13 is the question: what does it mean to be Malaysian? I thought I’d find the answer to that while working out my WP3. Instead, I concluded in that paper that the idea of being “Malaysian” is nothing more than a label of nationality through which the dominant class had attempted to fabricate a homogenous culture. I re-discovered the position of my culture (which is of course an amalgamation of different parts of Malaysia’s cultural corpus) and its narratives within the wider Malaysian society, and by transitivity, my own position within an ever-changing Malaysia. Researching both Malaysian history and using it to explain modern-day policies also opened my eyes to the systems of domination that continue to plague the nation today.

Fundamentally, I’ve come to realize that national unity in Malaysia should exist not as a tool for domination but as the appreciation of our heterogeneity, and the stories we have within all of us can contribute to the creation of that. And I think that’s important in today’s world. Because while the Malaysian problem is uniquely Malaysian, we’re seeing nations and communities worldwide grapple with how to unify a diverse population under a nation’s banner. Believing that all the peoples of Malaysia — with all our storied cultural backgrounds — can not only coexist but flourish without sacrificing any part of ourselves is tantamount to believing that a similar fate is possible for other nations: for the various marginalized groups here in the United States, and even for the unification of the Palestinian and Israeli people.

I’d go so far as to say that through the process of completing my writing projects this semester, I find myself better equipped to engage with the campus solidarity occupation movements across the nation throughout the past few weeks. I am able to draw parallels between the way narratives and counternarratives form in both the campus protests and the May 13 riots (though they are occurring, of course, at vastly different scales). I can contextualize where and how narratives on campus have shaped the contours of the movement itself: seeing the perception around the movement (at least in USC’s case) transform largely from a pro-Palestinian movement into a student vs USC administration issue, seeing how the administration’s vilification of the encampment as “illegal” and “violent” has shaped international news coverage in such a way that the Taiwanese news channel my mother watches cast the protests in a negative light. That even through it all, we end up commanding the protestors to conform to some made-up university culture and policy, and the violence that the administration itself has brought upon the protesting students, says far too much about the desire for a dominatable student body that is superficially united at best.

Postscript

It would be disingenuous for me to claim that any of my papers are about Palestine and Israel. They’re not. But my core belief about Palestine and Israel stems from how things are back home. Malaysia has enjoyed peace for over 50 years, in part due to the effort by the government, no matter how misguided, to ensure the ethnic harmony between all Malaysians. That this has manifested itself in reality as another oppressor-oppressed relationship is unfortunate. But recent trends in Malaysia, characterized by the polarization of its youth, somewhat along religious and ethnic lines, have me worried sometimes. I must necessarily believe that the unification of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples is possible, because to deny this is to deny the possibility of a Malaysia where its peoples continue to live in harmony. To say that the Palestinian and Israeli people are incompatible due to their religion or culture is to say that the Muslim Malays in Malaysia cannot coexist with the rest of the country. I know that is false. I know it is not the religion or the culture. Surely. I have to believe this to believe that I will one day have a home to return to.

[I recognize, of course, that this is the idealist position. There are far too many external and internal forces in play that expressly try to prevent this. Such a state must necessarily break free of both “Western” (Anglo-American) and Arabic influences. But it irks me when people say it’s fundamentally impossible. I find it often is a dog-whistle for islamophobia or xenophobia.]

I’ve never felt comfortable expressing my opinions on the Israel-Palestine issue here on campus. After how the USC administration handled the campus protests, I straight up don’t feel safe either. My roommate — also from Malaysia — received a correspondence from the Malaysian Embassy the other day warning them that their social media is being tracked by the NSA, and to not post or participate in campus protests as to avoid the potential for deportation. Perhaps this is just a scare tactic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were telling the truth either.

It makes me so deeply uncomfortable to see this power wielded by school administrations and the government. I mentioned, during one discussion, how most people back home don’t take protests seriously, especially when it is led by a younger generation. But I’m seeing the same sentiment here, too. The school administration’s apparent reluctance to even have a good-faith conversation with its students shows a clear distrust and disrespect for its student body.

Where do we go from here? I don’t think I have an answer for that right now. The school, and most of the nation, will undoubtedly move on. We’ll come back to campus next semester and there will be no more chain-link fences and security checks. But for me, it’ll be difficult to forget.