After The Malay Dilemma: The Modern Malay Subject and Cultural Logics of "National Cosmopolitanism" in Malaysia

Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir's The Malay Dilemma has provided the ideological foundation of the pro-bumiputera policy; it is for that reason worth re-reading. The paper will deconstruct the authorial desire of the text in order to excavate the psychological depth of Dr Mahathir's understanding of the "the problem facing the Malays". The relentless Othering of the Chinese, i argue, creates a cul-de-sac in the Malay subject whose socio-economic arrival is finally measured by the achievement of the Other. Both Malay marginalization and Chinese excessive endowment are constructions for making the "truth claims" about cause and origin of Malay backwardness. In this context, the new Malay subjectivity embodied in the Melayu Baru strikes precisely against this self-identification vis-à-vis the Chinese Other. More than that, as a new class located in capitalist modernity, the "New Malays" expresses a new and located cosmopolitanism characterized by going beyond the traditional ethnic binary of us versus them, Malay versus non-Malay, so central to the ruling UMNO ideology. This nascent sensibility of "national cosmopolitanism", it is ardently hoped, will be a beginning of the rupture of the terse antagonism of ethnic relations in Malaysia.