Productivity of the Common as Property in the Context of the Symbolic Propertization of Indigenous Knowledge: The Biopolitics of Traditional Malay Wau Bulan and Wau Kucing Kelantanese Kite Making as State Symbolic Property

Abstract

This essay examines factors responsible for the increase of productivity in traditional Malay wau bulan and wau kucing kite-making, indigenous to the Malaysian state of Kelantan and appropriated by the state as a common biopolitical production and symbolic property. This increase in productivity means increased accessibility of the commons among the community, achieved through state economic support and efforts by the community and state to promote the kite-making craft. Such increased productivity contradicts Michael Hardt’s reasoning that property’s productivity is usually reduced. Extending Hardt’s theory to Ernesto Laclau’s ideas on the relationship between the particular and the universal, the essay argues that the symbolic propertization of Kelantan kite making does not reflect a distinction between the kites’ qualities as common versus symbolic property. Input from selected authoritative kite-making practitioners and recent cultural memory shows that the Kelantan community benefits economically from the state’s appropriation of its traditional kites.