Revisiting Malaya: Uncovering Historical and Political Thoughts in Nusuntara ed. by Show Ying Xin and Ngoi Guat Peng (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Revisiting Malaya: Uncovering Historical and Political Thoughts in Nusuntara ed. by Show Ying Xin and Ngoi Guat Peng Liaw Siau Chi Revisiting Malaya: Uncovering Historical and Political Thoughts in Nusuntara. Edited by Show Ying Xin and Ngoi Guat Peng. Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2020. 511 pp. ISBN: 9789672165774 After joining the Singapore and Malaysia Office of the Inter-Asia School in Singapore, Dr Ngoi Guat Peng initiated a conference entitled 'Revisiting Malaya: Political and Historical Thoughts' in Kuala Lumpur in 2014 and another conference entitled 'Revisiting Malaya 2.0 International Conference: Links and Fractures in Political and Historical Thoughts' in Yogyakarta in 2016. At that time, Dr Show Ying Xin was the research assistant of the project. Ngoi and Show selected some English conference papers, facilitated the translation into Chinese and published them in Renjian Thought Review, a journal in Taiwan. They subsequently did the same to several Chinese conference papers and published them in the Journal of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Producing translations of academic papers is one of the best ways for scholars to share their ideas despite the language barriers that stem from different backgrounds in terms of nationality, culture, and community. This also benefits the public by providing easy access to scholarly points of view. However, the current academic evaluation mechanism for scholars does not consider the production of quality translated academic papers. Ngoi and Show deserve great credit for their contribution on initiating the translations. The initial edition of this book Chong fan Ma lai ya:zheng zhi yu li shi si xiang (重返马来亚：政治与历史思想), was written in Chinese and published in 2017. It contains the transcript of the panel discussions in 2014. The English edition of the book was published in 2020, and it compiled papers presented in 2014 and 2016. It took almost six years to construct a communication channel for academics [End Page 234] from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines to exchange ideas and to facilitate better research to be carried out in different countries. In the Chinese edition's introduction by the editors, Ngoi (魏月萍 & 苏颖欣, 2017, p. X) defines the term 'revisit' as not just confined to the literal meaning of 'return' or to 'visit again' the history. It aims to reflect, redefine, and to a large extent, to reconceptualise. Both editors have credited this to Chen Kuan-Hsing's 'Asia as a method', and Show (pp. 3–5) has elaborated in detail what is the implication of 'Malaya as a method'. 'Here, we seek to explicitly address problems such as colonialism and its ruminations, the intervention of the global Cold War in local realities, as well as the historical links and fractures that emerged during the process of subjectivity recognition and formation during the last century' (p. 4). In this sense, 'Malaya' is not a simple geographical location or a nation-state territory but a concept of epistemology. This book is beneficial to those with an interest in historical and regional research, especially comparative studies on Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Some may feel that the subject matter of this book is too divergent. The implication is clear. When choosing one historical topic in a country within this region, we need counterparts to complete the story. However, this book is a collection of conference and subsequently published papers. As Jomo K. S. pointed out, not all contributors adopted 'Malaya as a method' to articulate the discourse (p. xiv). For the benefit of the readers, the editor arranged the twenty-one articles into five main topics, namely, envisioning Malaysia, Malaysia in art and literature, anticolonial struggle and nationalism, imagined communities in the Malay world, the nation-state and beyond. The historical processes of Malaya's independence and the formation of Malaysia are full of challenges and tension. Its influence on neighbouring areas and their reaction is the topic of many essays in this book. For the left-wing in Singapore, embracing Malaya was once the idea of nation-building. Hong Lysa revisited the process of turning this dream into a nightmare. The idea of a 'multicultural nation in which all communities would be treated equally; a nation independent of colonial rule…rights for all people - both political and civil' (p. 48...