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24 Intimating the Sacred does record cultural memories, including ritual and religious practices, and such memories do play the crucial function of preserving for a people an identity that is often too easily disintegrated by the forgetfulness of nationalistic concerns.82 In considering the theme of religion in anglophone Malaysian literature, I am (re)visiting the “cultural memories” of a people and what they reveal about: the state of religious tension that has been ideologically engendered, thereby dividing the people; the complexities of practising religion in a country increasingly transformed by (post)modernity and globalization; and the private negotiations one has to make between one’s religious adherence and one’s sexuality, gender and/or class.83 Within such a reading praxis, my investigation of these texts follows Theodore Ziokolwiski’s recommendation that the religious elements in literature ought to be interpreted “seriously or parodistically, devoutly or critically”.84 Also, by focusing on the “local” and the “particular” of some of these narratives (Buddhism in Lee Kok Liang’s novel, Hinduism in Maniam’s writings, Christianity and Confucianism in Shirley Lim’s stories and Islam in the works of Che Husna Azhari and Karim Raslan), I hope that this study may reveal the ways in which these narratives participate in “the emergence of a new and broader definition of universal human values, which asserts the shared concerns of all peoples across their differences”.85 When reading the narratives of the writers, what becomes evident is the pronounced presence of religion, however indirect, as a theme. Or to put it differently and in order to address the title of this study, religion is often “intimated” in these narratives, forms an important subtext, and serves as a kind of interpretive direction, but without becoming a major concern (except perhaps for the writings of K. S. Maniam). The significance of religion in Malaysian anglophone fiction, however, has not been well reflected in available scholarship. Criticism often focuses largely on the dimensions of nationalism and/or race (see individual chapters for further evidence), neglecting altogether a host of equally important issues including religion, gender, sexuality and class. Also, such scholarship often adopts a sociological model for interrogation which, I feel, tends to ignore or neglect the texts’ more slippery and “unsymbolizable” features such as semblances of trauma, the violence of rhetoric, and the unconscious, all of which would be Introduction 25 revealed through a psychoanalytical investigation. As such, this study draws substantially on psychoanalytical insights (especially of the Lacanian school) to read the selected narratives’ portrayal of religion which, as it will become clear, is often inseparable from constitutions of sexuality, gender and race. Chapter 1 focuses on Lloyd Fernando’s two novels, Scorpion Orchid (1976) and Green Is the Colour (1993). Of the writers discussed in this study, Fernando’s depiction of multiracialism and multireligiosity is the most encompassing perhaps due to the overt political stance his narratives take. Separated by almost two decades, both novels provide variegated perspectives on Malaysia’s socio-political landscapes and the extent to which religion and race have influenced the differences. In the more optimistic Scorpion Orchid, Fernando recommends a model for nation-building that is premised on religion’s capacity to acknowledge and embrace otherness as a motivation towards unity. The “vision” proposed here has interesting affinities with French theorists Derrida’s and Levinas’s views on hospitality, and it is against this concept that I frame my reading of the novel. Green Is the Colour is decidedly darker in tone, implying a sense of frustration over the failed establishment of friendship amongst the different races, such as that envisioned in the first novel. This novel also gestures toward much of the racial unrest experienced by the country in 1969 although in a decidedly speculative manner. Together, both novels represent the cultural and political vicissitudes of a nation as it encounters modernization and globalization, and what this means for the various communities and their particular religious beliefs. Another writer who acknowledges religion’s capacity to celebrate otherness is Lee Kok Liang, whose works will be the focus of Chapter 2. In the only novel published during his lifetime, Flowers in the Sky (1981), Lee suggests that friendship can be forged between individuals from different racial and religious backgrounds without necessarily having to “recognize” the other as an ally; in fact, the narrative seems to imply, again with a Derridean slant, that friendship can also be premised on misrecognition. In the novel, it is the Buddhist monk...

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