excerpt: a brief history of joseph christopher pasqual

just parking this really well-written excerpt about a european man with very intimate connections with this part of the world. i might find it useful to picking out observations about the transnational flows of culture and family in my postgraduate research. especially since i intend to look at malayan-thai relations.

so, this is not my own writing. this is from a research article as spelt out in the following. happy reading! hope you appreciate this as much as i did.

Walker, K. (2012) “Intimate Interactions: Eurasian Family Histories in Colonial Penang,” Modern Asian Studies 46, 2 (Mar.), pp. 303-29.

Joseph Christopher Pasqual
Birthdate: circa February 04, 1865
Death: circa 1941 (67-83)
Singapore

Joseph Christopher Pasqual was a Thai-Portuguese Eurasian born in 1865 to a Catholic family in Pulau Tikus, whose ancestors stretched back to the second migrant group of Eurasian Catholics from Phuket. Pasqual joined the Land Office in Kuala Lumpur around 1885, and moved between government departments for several years. He distinguished himself, showing that he had ‘abilities far above the ordinary standard of Clerks’.73 But in 1889, he decided to give up his clerical career, stating that he was ‘physically unﬁt for a sedentary calling’.74 He went into coffee planting and tin mining in Selangor and Negri Sembilan and, in later years, in Perlis.75

In the history of tin mining in Malaya, Pasqual was a signiﬁcant ﬁgure. In 1902 he served as president of the Miners’ Association in the Federated Malay States.76 Pasqual’s career spanned a period of major structural changes within the industry, technical innovations, and changeable market conditions.77 But success in tin mining made him an inﬂuential and afﬂuent ﬁgure. Older residents of Malaya reﬂecting on the ‘good old times’ in 1952 remembered that he owned one of the ﬁrst motorcars—an Alldays and Onions model—seen in Penang.78 Pasqual was also a proliﬁc writer, publishing books and articles on a vast number of topics, from Chinese tin mining, rice cultivation, and sugar-cane growing in Malaya, to Malay customs and traditions, and the history of Penang.79 He had a long-held interest in Thailand, where he had travelled extensively, and published several articles on his train journeys from Perlis to Patani, and Malayan-Thai relations.80

In 1916, Pasqual married Ong Kim Choo, born of Teochew parentage in Trang in southern Thailand, a trading port with well established commercial tin mining and familial links with Penang.81 It was only during the second decade of the twentieth century that Teochews began to arrive in Trang in signiﬁcant numbers, many coming as workers on the construction of the Southern Line of the Thai State Railway.82 By the early twentieth century, the Chinese community in Thailand was large and complex, and a dominant force in Thai commercial life. Many Chinese families had assimilated into Thai society. Others maintained a distinct Chinese identity, institutionalized in language group associations, schools, and newspapers, and, by the 1910s, a growing Chinese nationalism.83 When Pasqual met Ong Kim Choo,the Chinese presence in Thailand was becoming increasingly politicized. Family members remember Ong Kim Choo telling them that she was just 15 when she married the then middle-aged Pasqual in a Chinese ceremony, a relationship her parents had forced her into (see Figure 2).84

After they married, Ong Kim Choo changed her name to Rosa Pasqual, but retained many of her Thai nyonya traditions, continuing to wear a baju and sarong, and chew betel nut.85 Like Ponnia Moissinac, she only converted to Catholicism later in life. Although she shared many Western customs with her grandchildren, including celebrating Christmas with them, they remember that she ate with her ﬁngers, and enjoyed eating spicy sambal belachan on a lettuce leaf, which she rolled up and chewed.86 This was a multilingual household, as she spoke Thai with her children; Malay with her Tamil servant, and also with her grandchildren who replied to her in English or Hokkien; and Hokkien with other Chinese. Pasqual’s writings were peppered with Figure 2. Rosa Pasqual with her children, 1920. Source: Private collection of Avril Pasqual.87 Malay and Chinese words, and he was known to speak Thai, English, possibly a Chinese dialect, and read Jawi, a script of spoken Malay.88

Figure 2. Rosa Pasqual with her children, 1920. Source: Private collection of Avril Pasqual.87

From his writings, a ﬂavour of the domestic life in the Pasqual household emerges. In an article about the Ma’yong, a form of ancient Malay theater native to the northern Malay States, Pasqual revealed that he had personally tried to revive its popularity by ﬁnancing a troupe of Ma’yong players from Kedah to play in his compound in Province Wellesley, and had invited all the villagers to watch.89 But although ethnic, linguistic, and cultural pluralism emerge strongly from the archive of memory within this Eurasian family, Joseph Pasqual remained in many ways an elusive ﬁgure. Family members discovered later that Pasqual was actually already married when he met Ong Kim Choo. His ﬁrst and only legal wife was an Australian woman called Victoria Keaughran, with whom he had three children who were brought up as Europeans and were educated in England and Scotland.90 After ‘marrying’ Ong Kim Choo, he was married twice more, to another Sino-Thai woman, and then to a Chinese woman. His demise is equally mysterious. Within the family’s history, several contradictory stories about his death have come to light; in one, he died, along with his ﬁrst wife, in a ship that sank off the coast of Singapore; in another he was murdered by communists after the war for collaborating with the Japanese.91 The enquiries of the colonial government in 1947 revealed that Victoria Keaughran had been evacuated from Penang to Singapore in February 1942, and was believed to have died on the Gian Bee, an evacuation ship which was bombed by the Japanese. It was gathered that J. C. Pasqual had been living in Thailand before the war, and was separated from his wife. He too was evacuated to Singapore, where he died at some point during the Japanese occupation.92

73 Auditor, Audit Ofﬁce, to British Resident, Selangor, 18 July 1888, 1957/0011788, Arkib Negara Malaysia.
74 Joseph Pasqual to Acting Collector and Magistrate, Ulu Langat, 18 November 1889, 1957/0017687, Arkib Negara Malaysia.
75 Stanley Musgrave Middlebrook,Yap Ah Loy,1837–1885 (Kuala Lumpur: Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,1983),p.126. See also ‘A Model Coffee Planter’, Straits Observer, 23 July 1897, p.3; and Petition from Towkay’s Ah Yeok Lok Chen, Ah Peng and J. C. Pasqual, 27 July 1892, 1957/0032174, Arkib Negara Malaysia.
76 Straits Times, 18 December 1902, p.4.
77 J.M.Gullick, A History of Selangor (1766–1939)(Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1998), pp. 150–53. See also Wong Lin Ken, The Malayan Tin Industry to 1914 (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1965).
78 Straits Times, 30 November 1952, p.4.
79 His writings include ‘One Hundred Years of Penang’, The Pinang Gazette, Centenary Edition, 1933, pp. 9–10, 73; ‘Chinese Tin Mining in Selangor’, Selangor Journal, 4, 1896, pp. 25–29; ‘The Limestone Caves of Perlis’, Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 30 August 1921, p.1; ‘A Trip to Patani’, Straits Times, 2 August 1923, p.10; ‘The Mayong Play’, Straits Times, 16 May 1937, p.10.
80 Straits Times, 19 June 1913, p.11; and2 August 1923, p.10.
81 Email conversations with Avril Pasqual. On the familial and commercial connections between southern Thailand and Malaya, see Jennifer Cushman, Family and State: The Formation of a Sino-Thai Tin-Mining Dynasty, 1797–1932 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 14.
82 Tong Chee Kiong and Chan Kwok Bun, Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 149–50; and G. William Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 178–79.
83 Christopher John Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 95–96.
84 Email conversations with Avril Pasqual.
85 Email conversations with Avril Pasqual.
86 Email conversations with Avril Pasqual.
87 Reproduced with permission from Avril Pasqual. 88 See, for example,J. C. Pasqual,‘Chinese Tin Mining in Selangor’,Selangor Journal, 4, 1895, pp. 25–29. 89 Straits Times, 16 May 1937, p.10.
90 Email conversations with Avril Pasqual.
91 ‘Serani Sembang’.
92 Memorandum from O i/c V.F.R.O., Peel Avenue, Penang to O.C., CRO, VFRO (Malaya), Kuala Lumpur, 8 July 1947, 1957/0472465, Arkib Negara Malaysia.

from pegu to borneo: memory, ritual and transformation of martaban jars into pusaka

finally got the grade for my essay on martaban jars, which i painstakingly wrote. and yaaaaay, i got a first class! but i could still use some improvement according to my lecturer. here’s what he had to say:

This essay deserves praise for the identification of an interesting and illuminating site of interaction, Martaban jars, and the interpretation of their changing meaning. The argument could be more strongly executed though, and there could have been less of a tendency to write in generalised terms about transregional maritime flows. There is not also insufficient consistent focus on interactions, say of the styles and methods, as required by this coursework.

kinda had to re-read the last line. does he mean that there was insufficient focus or that it was consistent? well i guess he has his sasau days too, not just me hehe.

anyway, here is my essay. this was my first time writing about material culture so it could definitely use improvement. i appreciate all kinds of constructive feedback uwu.

Introduction

The various designs and functions of martaban jars demonstrate the dynamism that emerged with the expansion of maritime voyages during the early modern period of Southeast Asia. These jars do not just have great commercial and aesthetic value, they have also become imbued with memories of ancestry, love, life and death as heirloom items (peska or pusaka) to indigenous cultures in Borneo, or otherwise known today as East Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei (Geiger-Ho, 2014:2). By drawing upon existing knowledge about martaban jars in museum collections and archaeological reports, this report will explore the history of pusaka jars stretching beyond the boundaries of nation-states and the transnational nature of indigenous spirituality as a consequence of maritime trade.

Hybrid aesthetics as a result of intercultural exchanges

The origins of martaban jars can be determined by their features such as their glaze, colour, decorations, size and lugs (Cort and Lefferts, 2013:237). According to Geiger-Ho, the general description for martaban jars are “large, brown to almost black, glazed jars”. They usually have broad shoulders and “thick-lipped narrow mouths”. The glaze conventionally has a “poured effect” that results in the natural clay at the bottom remaining exposed (Geiger-Ho, 2014:3). Nonetheless, there are several variations in these features that indicate the diversity of traditions in the manufacturing of martaban jars.

While most of the martaban jars in the collection of museums were made in Guangdong province, southern China, the colour and chemical composition of glazes reveal the exchanges in pottery traditions in Asia (Stöber, 2014: 39; Cort and Lefferts, 2013:235). The technique of glazing the jars is said to be introduced to Burma by Dvavarati traditions, as confirmed through an examination of glazed pottery in U-Thong, Thailand (Gutman, 2001:109). Other styles of glazing include the ash-coloured natural glaze, known in Japan as “dragonfly eye”, found in jars from the Tang dynasty (618-907), leather-textured glazes claimed to be of Manchu origin under the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and lead glaze which was a predominant style in Burma (Stöber, 2014: 20-21, 25, 265).

Figure 1. OKS 1984-70. *Source*: Photograph by Eva Ströber.

An example of a martaban jar that demonstrates such hybrid qualities would be a large storage jar at the Princessehof Museum in Netherlands (Figure 1). This particular jar once belonged to Lawai Jau, the chief of Kenyah peoples in Sarawak. In terms of shape and the glaze’s “poured effect”, this jar remains conventional. However, its exquisite relief of tigers and blossoms as well as handles in the shape of tigers are characteristic of the Ming dynasty period. Due to its light brown glaze, this type of jar is more likely to be made in Go-sanh, Vietnam (Stöber, 2014: 11-12; Cort and Lefferts, 2013: 235). These intersections in pottery-making tradition highlight the transnational flows of techniques and symbols in different cultures across Asia.

The acquisition of martaban jars across the Indian Ocean

The port of Martaban located at the gulf of Pegu, has been recorded as an active and important nodal point in ceramic trade from the seventh to eleventh century, particularly the Song and Ming dynasties (Borell, 2014:257; Gutman, 2001:113) A lasting legacy of this port would be the synonymy of the term martaban with variations of these large jars. Through 17th century shipwrecks, it was discovered that martaban jars were a major trade for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as they could effectively store items such as salted pork, opium, ginger, wine, gunpowder and other items while being shipped from Coromandel to Batavia (Stöber, 2014: 27; Borell, 2014:286). In Borneo, large amounts of jars were brought into the region through Santubong, a port along the Sarawak river since the Song dynasty. By the 14th century, the Kelabit would have access to jars from China, Vietnam and Thailand (Geiger-Ho, 2014:7-8).

Figure 2. Kelabit children with *pusaka* jars. *Source*: The Star.

By the 19th century, a contraband trade for 500 year old Ming jars between Dayak groups and Malay or Chinese traders developed along the Kapuas river (Césard, 2014:65; Tagliacozzo, 2005:17). Such a melange of jars being transformed into heirloom items is proven above (Figure 2). This photograph was featured in an exhibition titled, “Ceramic Odyssey: From China to the Ulu” in 2006 at the Sarawak Museum (The Star, 2006). Between the two dark-coloured glazed martaban jars lies a Ming jar that is most likely blue and white in colour. These jars, previously notable for its storage capacity in other parts of Asia would take on as intergenerational objects that determine the wealth and status of indigenous families in Borneo (Heng, 1989:113).

Becoming pusaka: the role of heirloom jars in everyday life

Among Dayak groups in Borneo, there are two types of pusaka jars. The first are ordinary heirloom jars which are used for storage purposes, brewing rice beer and marriage payment (Césard, 2014:65). The second are extraordinary heirloom jars which are deemed to be sacred, mostly reserved as ossuaries or trophies from headhunting (Césard, 2014:63). The extraordinary heirloom jars are a reflection of the incredible dynamism that is consequent of maritime trade across the Indian Ocean in the early modern era. Their sacrality is said to originate from indigenous mythology of being ‘conceived by dragons, have fallen from the sky or be born as a Man at the heart of the forest’ (Césard, 2014:68).

Figure 3. Dragon jar dating back to the Ming period. Source: Photography by Tun Jugah Foundation.

This explains why extraordinary heirloom jars are most often known as “Dragon Jars”. Embroidered with “sprigged dragons” as shown in Figure 3, these jars are meant to capture the symbolism of dragons in ritual (Geiger-Ho, 2014:5). In China, the dragon (yang) symbolizes the masculine element of cosmic powers and rules the universe. In Borneo, the dragon is conceived as ‘a source of fertility’ and ruler of the underworld (Stöber, 2014: 34).

Conclusion

It is no wonder that such processes would result in the reconstitution and negotiation of meanings of martaban jars, to the extent of being imbued with anthropomorphic and supernatural characteristics (Geigher-Ho, 2014:6-7). As a result, the mobility of the martaban jar resulted in them not having static meanings. Rather, they are shaped by the larger transnational flows in local conceptions of faith.

Bibliography

Borell, B. (2014). “A True Martaban Jar A Burmese Ceramic Jar in the Ethnological Museum in Heidelberg (Germany)” in McNair, A. and McGannon, A. (eds). Artibus Asiae. Konstanz: Museum Rietberg Zurich: 257-298.
Césard, N. (2014). Heirlooms and marriage payments. Indonesia and the Malay World. 42/122: 62-87.
Cort, L., and Lefferts, L. (2013). Jars in the Central Highlands of Mainland Southeast Asia. In Klokke M. & Degroot V. (eds.). Materializing Southeast Asia’s Past: Selected Papers from the 12th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists. Singapore: NUS Press: 233-241.
Geiger-Ho, M. (2014). Vessels of Life and Death: Heirloom Jars of Borneo; paper presented at Malaysia – Brunei Forum 2014, Kuala Lumpur.
Gutman, P. (2011). The Martaban Trade: An Examination of the Literature from the Seventh Century until the Eighteenth Century. Asian Perspectives, 40/1: 108-118
Heng, L. (1989). Reviewed Work: PUSAKA: HEIRLOOM JARS OF BORNEO by BARBARA HARRISSON. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 62/1/256:112-115.
Stöber, E. (2014). The Collection of Chinese and Southeast Asian Jars (martaban, martavanen) at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Leeuwarden: Princessehof Museum, https://www.princessehof.nl/img/uploads/jars_research_Eva.pdf, date accessed 12/02/19.
Tagliacozzo, E. (2005). Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915. New Haven: Yale University Press.
The Star (2006) “Ethnic use of Chinese jars” (13/04/2006), https://www.thestar.com.my/news/community/2006/04/13/ethnic-use-of-chinese-jars/, date accessed 9/02/19.

fading memories and forced abstractions – writing a decolonial history of 19th century pahang

i realized that i have not written anything about my dissertation on my blog. although tbh, i find working on my dissertation rather petrifying. i am intimidated by the entire process. in the past, i refused to admit that writing a 10,000 word paper that demonstrates original analysis would be a rather daunting task. i think i took the process for granted because my lecturers seem very confident with my ability to write quality academic work.

that is very reassuring and all, but what i did not expect to happen was the side effects of treating endometriosis to mess up my work schedule. especially this whole “brain fog” situation where i get extremely lethargic and began to lose chunks of memory, that includes assignment deadlines and appointments! i have even forgotten my habits.

it was very frustrating last week as i was very eager to write the introduction to my thesis and submit it. instead, i was struck with the curse of sleeping 12 hours a day and mentally drained. it did not help that i have some toxic drama-o-rama to deal with on campus. of which, i have finally decided that i cannot deal with the poor sense of mindfulness that others are cursed with at the moment, and focus on creating and sustaining mental space that will allow me to get through these final months with flying colours!

for my introduction, i intended to write about the theories i am deploying. i would consider them as an expansion of my theoretical work for a module i took during my second year. it was called cultural politics. for the assignment, i worked on a detailed comparison between homi bhabha’s “sly civility” and syed hussein alatas’ “the myth of the lazy native”. i’m not sure why i was interested to make this analysis in the first place, but i was quite intrigued by the common theme of enlightenment//colonialism being conflated and rendered as compatible in the advent of european political expansion in asia. anyway, the following is an abstract:

‘Sly Civility’ in Colonial Malaya: Applying Bhabha to The Myth of the Lazy Native

In 1977, sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas wrote his seminal work titled “The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism”. This book was a critique of the image of Malays, Filipinos and Javanese constructed by the colonial masters. Alatas utilizes theories derived from Karl Mannheim and the sociology of knowledge in order to deconstruct the origins and functions of myths that reinforce colonial ideology and capitalism.

The concept of the “lazy native” is the main contention that is being discussed by Alatas. He examines the way in which colonizers respond to the non-cooperation of the Malays with the oppressive working conditions formulated by colonial capitalism. To a certain extent, this narrative opens up the possibility to analyze the colonialist discourse of laziness through Homi Bhabha’s Sly Civility (1994). This is because Bhabha’s method of analysis can be replicated to understand the rationale behind the strategies of control and the implicit meanings of the language which aids in the construction of the colonial image of Malays to act in the service of colonial capitalists. Particularly, it is useful to understand how this notion of “laziness” can even be interpreted as an act of resistance against the colonizer who has “the demand for narrative”.

By looking through Alatas’ collection of accounts made by 19th century European observers on the incidents of corruption and despotism committed by the Malay elite, this permits an analysis of the regulation of colonialist discourse and how the “the myth of the lazy native” is a product of an elusive process of doubling and splitting, to meet a particular agenda for the successful operation of colonial exploitation.

going further, i felt that i kinda found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow with this essay, because it adds more dynamism to the study of colonialism in malaya, which up to this date, remains dominated by more traditional approaches of historiography. well, it is not a surprise actually since there are well-acclaimed “national historians” (whatever that term means anyway) that still hold the opinion that malaysia was never colonized because of some semantic bullshit. yes, that is the dire state of historical studies within malaysia uols.

with this in mind, i wanted to explore the potential of alatas and bhabha being used as a combination to become a “method” of studying colonial documentation in 19th and 20th century british malaya. however, after perusing authoritative secondary sources on the pahang civil war, 1891-95, i discovered that perhaps they act more like the aftermath of describing primary sources (in my case, newspaper reports and the writings of hugh clifford the man-child huehue).

and so, what is the methodology that i should be utilizing to adequately study my primary sources? when i spoke to my sociology xifu, syed farid alatas. yes, son of THE syed hussein alatas. i go to him for chats about really intimate parts of my personal life (love and spirituality mostly). he was really excited about my dissertation which btw, is being converted into a book chapter edited by farish noor and peter carey *pride af*.

evidence uwu. taken in 2016 at darband, iran on a study trip.

he suggested that i tried looking into karl mannheim’s the interpretation of weltanschauung and ranajit guha’s the prose for counterinsurgency. at first, i was like dafuq they are worlds apart. mannheim a pretty traditional sociologist with marxist frameworks and guha, the big guy of subaltern studies and indian history. anyway, i had to abandon mannheim eight pages in because he ended up being pretty useless.

guha, on the other hand, i totally appreciate his attempt to delineate and compartmentalize archives into a hierarchy of evidence, defining their origins and nature but… why the fuck do geng subaltern studies always need to write in an unnecessarily convoluted way?! i thought the whole idea was to promote history from below, not make your critiques so ambiguous that no one can understand you unless they had a dictionary by their side. after a while, i started to feel that this might just be elitist tosh. trying to not get a blanket judgment on the body of literature either way, i strongly believe behind the horrendous writing there are some powerful ideas.

the prose for counter-insurgency is actually pretty dope. besides the hierarchy of evidence, the usage of a few sample colonial texts and incorporation of “indices” really demonstrate that there is a typology of colonial language to not just distort, but erase the political motivations of rebellions into footnotes of savagery in the long, powerful history of imperialism (okay, i am starting to write like one of them now oh dear). in a way, you could use him as a model for reading the racial bias and reductionist tendencies of british colonial texts.

but at the end, i still felt pretty intimidated about writing my introduction. so i made an appointment with my supervisor to air out my grievances. i thought he might get worried about my ability to submit any material on time but surprisingly… he wasn’t! not even the slightest bit. which was EXTREMEEEEELY reassuring i must say. he did however, make me confront my fear of going into the primary sources and highly advised me that i should, because i would probably find it more enjoyable than other things.

sumit was like “where in my feedback did i suggest that you are not on the right track??”. oopsie. i guess it must be the overthinking and the fog which seems to be making me forget that i’m fine, just need to jump into the archives. the utilizing of guha might also end up being forced abstraction if i focus too much on it, so he told me to take guha as a source of inspiration rather than a method to be followed. this is because it appears like i have plenty of material to allow the context of pahang history “to speak for itself”. sumit said this based on the literature review i submitted. that was probably my first piece of work that he did not heavily critique. a great sign for sure!

i should be careful not to cram too much into my thesis. otherwise, it would be spreading itself too thin. the goal of this written work is to demonstrate that colonial wars in 19th century malaya can be interpreted in ways that reveal the eurocentric bias on racial differences. basically, it is a decolonial history of the pahang civil war.

so, i will be looking into the newspapers now i guess. looking forward to it. to end, i shall dump the abstract of my dissertation here:

‘Sly Civility’ and the Lazy Malay: The Discursive Economy of British Colonial Power during the Pahang Civil War, 1891-1895

The Pahang Civil War from 1891 to 1895 remains one of the most defining events in Malay nationalist historiography. This is because it is best remembered as an episode of brazen resistance against the British colonial apparatus. It has been argued that the civil war was caused by escalating tensions between Malay chiefs and the British administration as the Resident System expanded control over the social, economic and political life of Malay society. However, many studies on this period of Pahang’s state history are very dependent on the colonial perspective of the war. This study examines the significance of representations of the Pahang Civil War in reinforcing the stability and legitimacy of British colonial power. Through a detailed examination of newspaper reports, short stories, oral history and authoritative secondary sources, it can be seen that the opposition of Malay rebels to the British administration in Pahang challenged and destabilized the existing colonial imagination of Malays as “lazy” and “passive” beings. As a result, the British colonial administration had to articulate the existence of a discursive economy to protect its growing interests in 19th century Pahang through two ways: (a) the development of a colonial body of knowledge on race and racial differences and (b) the usage of nonviolent yet coercive tactics, myth-making and subjective documentation to fix the image of Malays as an indolent Other.

it’s arabicized not arabized!

feel like i’ve been a little less active here. tbh i really just have been so excited about getting a conditional offer to cambridge that i couldn’t bring myself back to the ground for a bit. it’s just such a big deal for me you know? i never thought that i would have such potential to be considered for an opportunity like this. i feel like it must be a long road because for the longest time, i never felt that i was any good in spite of spending so many hours studying and doing things that i am passionate about.

the biggest improvement i have seen so far is my sense of identity and confidence levels. i feel like i am able to acknowledge and own that my struggles were worth it, and that i can assure myself that i conquered whatever that crossed my path.

usually, i am pretty goon during seminar discussions for sites of asian interaction (probably because of the brain fog i was dealing with) but it seems to be going away… and possibly returning. the only way to deal with it is to sleep it off. so i guess i should take my friday slow and do what i can. i really need to finish the draft of the introductory chapter to my dissertation. the last two chapters are just too intense and i probably need to dedicate a lot of time in order to submit them on time!

anyway, back to the seminars, i actually noticed that i am able to tease out and articulate what i find interesting about the readings and lectures again. we recently looked at ronit ricci’s paper about how citations in islamic manuscripts are a site of literary networks in what she calls, ‘the arabic cosmopolis’.

Ricci, R. (2012). Citing as a Site: Translation and circulation in Muslim South and Southeast Asia. Modern Asian Studies, 46(2), 331-353.

when i was preparing for the cambridge workshop in kuala lumpur, my supervisor recommended me to read ricci’s book, islam translated, so that i had a more nuanced idea about the circulation of islamic texts and its role in conversion of maritime southeast asian polities.

ever since i read this book, i fell completely in love with the way in which manuscripts play such an important role in this part of the world. this paper is a more compressed version of the book, but still brilliant nonetheless.

i really like how meticulously she draws comparisons between various translation styles in different literary traditions. for example, she points out how the phrase bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim as what she calls, a paratext, is adapted to suit tamil, javanese and malay linguistic structures. the javanese example is pretty unique because of all the cases she looked at, the javanese text is the only one to translate the words into localized vocabulary, and basically paraphrases this sacred phrase rather than keeping it as it is.

essentially, ricci’s contemplations on the emergence of islamic literary tradition in southeast asia sheds light on the complexities in understanding what it means to undergo “arabization”. in fact, the term itself has become incredibly loaded in malaysia. especially after a particular prime minister’s daughter described the rising islamic conservatism as “arab colonization” or “arabization”. during a panel session of which she spoke about this topic, i somewhat challenged her to think about how uncritical and potentially, xenophobic such a remark comes across. and that it does not necessarily capture the wider imagination of malay muslims. she was pretty upset with me so i didn’t really get a good conversation at the end.

what i despise most about conversations about how malaysia is so “arabized” is basically for several reasons, as discussed during class the other day.

one, it operations on the assumption that there is a “real” and “pure” malay identity that is tolerant and inclusive. this essentialist concept of malays gallivanting in figure hugging kebayas and dancing to western music, drinking wine and gambling is mostly captured by the liberal malays that often make up the elite class. this is not to say that they are wrong about what it means to be malay. i just don’t think that this is the only way malayness has been expressed in the very long history of plurality that we are in. what more when you think about the presence of hadrami arabs and their tremendous influence on cultural, social and political practices of malay muslims.

two, it assumes that malays have no responsibility and agency in taking on trendier performative gestures of their piety. like, why blame everything on a community that exists outside of your own (taking this in the context of alienation produced by the modern nation-state)? ricci’s paper demonstrates that without interlocutors that are locally bred and based, such versions of faith and religion that we know of today wouldn’t be so widely embraced. so i think such a narrative is merely a trope of fear among the more liberal factions of the country, and not so much a genuine address of issues like political extremism.

is there some kind of communication breakdown in the society we are in today? ricci’s paper also make me ponder upon the whole “allah” drama-o-rama that happened a few years ago. basically, we had one of the most racially tensed court cases in the history of this country. all because there were many muslims that got upset with the usage of allah in reference to god in a malay translation of the holy bible.

apparently it caused great offense because the muslims concerned felt that allah was a specific signifier for god in an islamic context. and so to use it in a christian context was painted as being an insidious trick to seduce muslims into christianity. can’t help but to wonder how true this really is. after all, the arrival of christianity to the malay world was a LOT later than islam.

if we apply ricci’s analysis, allah was one of those words that authoritatively superseded”tuhan” in the malay language, especially in the advent of islamization. i guess this is what she meant by these processes being referred to “arabicized” rather than “arabized” because local languages were influenced by arabic in a way that encouraged combinations rather than replacements. perhaps more than anything, these issues are mostly deeply embedded by the severity of our racialized politics, rather than islamic discourse.

i don’t think i will be able to come up with a final opinion on these issues, but i am certainly on the side that we should abandon a blanket term like arabization to describe the slippery slope towards theocratic tendencies in malaysia. it’s a lot more complicated than that! but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the language for it. we just need to spend more time pondering and searching for pluralities that we can be at peace with.

re-imagining people’s herstory, one girl at a time.

sooooo just parking my speech for international women’s day 2019 celebrations at my university! so honoured that they invited me to partake in a student sharing session.

*takes deep breath*

i feel it is important for me to begin with this question. why is international women’s day significant to us?

we now know IWD as a day of celebration introduced by the united nations in 1975. however, it is incredible that the concept of “women’s day” goes back to the early 20^th century, where the first recorded demonstration was organized by the socialist party of america in 1909.

in fact, once women in soviet russia gained suffrage in 1917, march 8 was declared a national holiday there. perhaps IWD is not important enough to be day off in the imagination of many nations, but with the continuous revival of feminism especially with the #MeTooMovement and Women’s March, today remains as an opportunity to express womanhood in its most political form.

regardless, history or more appropriately, herstory does not lie about the legacy of contesting ideologies in creating a space for women to embrace their agency and fight for equal rights.

yet, such historiography still leaves limited room for women and the myriad of dynamic roles they have played in shaping the course of humanity’s progress.

do we only commemorate women because they have played a primary role in shifting the political tide? should we only celebrate women when they have invented something that could save the world?

this is not to undermine the remarkable achievements of women in fields such as science and technology as well as the arts and social sciences. in fact, the glass ceiling is an extremely real phenomenon of which many women are fighting to shatter and that includes myself. But here is something else to think about.

how do we consider the manifestations of feminism in its various forms, even in its most invisible state?

when i co-founded my organization, imagined malaysia, this would always be at the back of my mind as I continued to work towards my dream to be a historian.

i wonder, how can we use IWD as a space to go beyond what we already know as essential to empowering a certain kind woman?

this IWD, let us speak about female empowerment from various angles of experience and memory. how do we do that?

my mentor, dr sumit mandal, once mentioned in class that the study of history and dependence on conventional archives did not contribute to learning about the story of women in making meaningful social transformations.

instead, it was the rather unconventional research methods often deemed to be not archive-worthy that were central in documenting women’s history. given the persistence of patriarchal structures in family, society and government, women remain at the periphery when it comes to their influence in decision-making processes.

by emphasizing on the most ordinary aspects of the lives of women, a new kind of history became the ideal vehicle for presenting women’s history. this includes subjects such as women in education, birth control, domestic work, marriage, sexuality and motherhood.

take rosaline hoalim for example. she was a young medical student who met her peranakan husband in cambridge, england. rosaline and her siblings would eventually become one of british malaya’s most influential families.

rosaline’s british guyanese heritage brings an equivocal sense of cosmopolitanism to what would be a determining factor in her children.

most notably, her daughter pg lim would rise into prominence in the making of modern malaysia. Not only was pg one of the first women to practice law in the country, she would be best known as the first female ambassador.

as described by her son, lim kean siew, who would be best known as one of penang’s best lawyers and the founder of the labour party of malaya, rosaline never failed to instill the values of social reform in her children.

inevitably, this had resulted in a family that would be remembered through the course of malaysia’s historical changes.

while the iconic 1909 garment worker’s strike in new york has become a dominant narrative in women’s history, it is also important to highlight the overall impact of such an event in our awareness of the challenges of protecting the rights of workers in the light of global economic transformations.

a great example of this would be the work of malaysian anthropologist, aihwa ong titled “spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline”.

what was so brilliant about aihwa’s book was that it documented the cultural and political impact of “runaway factories” on the developing world. through ethnographical research, the book delivers an innovative analysis of the lives of young rural malay women who helped launch malaysia’s rise as a tiger economy.

these findings capture the kind of paradoxical experiences that shape life as a modern Muslim woman in the midst of massive modernization. aihwa noted the various resistance tactics by female workers to protest labor discipline and male control in the modern industrial situation.

“female complaints” such as crying, period cramps and even falling prey to angry spirits were found to be frequent tropes that allowed women to defy back-breaking production targets and poor working conditions.

i find this very insightful because these “female problems” which have often been framed as the limited potential and capacity of women can actually be redefined so that women can gain control and power in patriarchal work spaces.

it cannot be denied that without the course of herstory, the progress of countries would not have evolved the way it did. the study of women’s history will always continue to expand so that it can be more sincere and inclusive.

i hope what i have shared with you today illustrates why it is crucial to radically ponder upon what IWD means to women of all walks of life. this is because i believe that through making greater sense of the past, we can seek solutions and opportunities for the women of today.

*fin*

nevertheless, she persisted.

this is to let you know that i FINALLY submitted my archival research report on martaban jars. well, the good thing was that i am allowed to get extensions upon request because i am registered as a disabled student.

yup, you read that right. besides depression and chronic anxiety, i also have to deal with an autoimmune condition called endometriosis. it looks like i am not as “productive” as i used to be since being diagnosed as an endowarrior (i call myself that so that i can take on a more positive outlook).

lo and behold, i now wear my endowarrior badge with pride because i survive!

i didn’t expect myself to encounter such great difficulty in writing this essay. i feel so tired and lethargic all the time. i think it would probably be better if i do not push myself to be super active because i seem to get exhausted pretty easily.

besides getting an extension, i cancelled two work-related appointments because they require me to travel to kuala lumpur, and well fuck that because it would take up the entire day! i got to deliver a speech on friday for international women’s day.

that’s pretty exciting but i prepared my talking points since i planned to share examples of women’s history and challenging patriarchal elements in historiography. it’s only 10 minutes though and i will be speaking to a crowd of scientists… not sure if they would be down for that.

back to the report. omg. i don’t know why i was struggling so much with this!

up to submission time (mostly because i got so frustrated and fed up with writing the essay that i decided to just finish it off and turn-it-in), i felt like i still had no idea whether i was writing it in the desired format. i might have just been overthinking but i am glad that i got rid of it. now just need to hope that it gets marked generously by my lecturer.

ok, i digress.

about three days ago, i went to the application portal for cambridge and saw that my status was updated to “awaiting for approval from graduate admissions office (gao)”. i was like what dat. so i did some googling and ended up back at the student room.

tbh it felt like good ol’ times when i was applying to the uk via ucas out of peer pressure. ended up finding a thread on postgraduate applications for 2019. and people said that that phrase meant…

i got a conditional offer. it seemed like 98% that was the case too. but like literally everyone whom i told, it’s only legit when i get the offer letter. funny, i thought i would have to wait for another couple more weeks until i heard from gao but hey, hey, what do you know – this woman did get a conditional offer the following night!!

i am still processing this but i couldn’t be any prouder of myself for not letting endometriosis, depression and anxiety inhibit my full potential.

this would not be possible without the support of my friends, mother, sisters, my partner and most importantly, the person who has mentored me throughout my time here – my supervisor.

do you know that feeling when something so amazing happens that being awake is suddenly so much joyous than sleeping? issa mood. the best part is that for the first time in my life i get to celebrate my achievement outside of a toxic environment. i overcame my chronic illnesses.

at the same time, i cannot help but to feel overwhelmed. even a little anxious. i have never ever lived abroad unlike my peers. and what more under the condition of postgraduate studies. i’m more excited than worried though. i really want to keep the positive vibes.

and to reward myself, i want to take a break this weekend. i don’t want to touch my books. i need to pause this moment. breathe. ponder. reflect. move. i deserve a moment to recollect what i thought was broken. this is like a process of kintsugi right now.

happy women’s day.

the past is not another country.

omg. it is super rare to find very good threads on history which are not just explanatory.

you could probably find plenty that showcase beautiful manuscripts, documents and photographs. i don’t blame people for not writing more details on what they have discovered in their research because twitter has very limited characters unlike a blog.

BUT that is not the point of this post. i think that twitter is mostly a socio-political space but ironically you don’t find historians engaging with polemics or the politics of their research areas.

i find that strange because as historians, we should be always engaging with transformations of historiography. given that history is not a linear process, we should always seek ways to understand the marginalized, the complex, the underrated – the downtrodden. this would mean that there must be more experimentation with methodologies and approaches to our objects of study.

i came across this twitter thread by an american historian of greek classics, matt simonton which i believe is a must read:

A short thread on the “Classics and its relation to ‘Western Civilization'” brouhaha. There’s already been enough said about the relatively recent development of the concept of “Western Civilization” and its ideological uses. I would focus instead on relating past and present. /1— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

before you think, since when netusha ever reads anything pertaining to white peeps and their history. well, i do okai, especially because if you want to be a good historian you would need to try to learn a breadth of literature. plus, i would totally want to be one of those historians who are able to support a project for writing more inclusive global histories. that can only be done if i were to have better knowledge about other continents, nation-states and communities.

back to simonton (2019) anyway (and yes i just in-text cited him because this is some legit criticism of classicism):

As @Twhittermarsh has already said, most classicists seek to historicize the ancient past, i.e. to understand it on its own terms and not in the service of some teleological argument that makes the present the straightforward inheritor of the Greeks and Romans. /2— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

this is where the tea spilling begins:

I wholeheartedly agree: One thing that emerges rather organically, I would say, from having my students read the ancient sources is their sense of alienation from the Greeks and their “weird” practices (bloody animal sacrifice, pederasty, etc.). /3— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

This kind of distancing (“the past is another country” etc) seems to me one purpose of any good history course: to “de-naturalize” or make unfamiliar something the students previously thought straightforward. /4— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

By the same token, if something does appear at first glance familiar, it is useful to dwell on it and work through the complexity. My students see, eg, the Spartan Great Rhetra as a kind of precursor to US divided government. But is it? /5— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

The Rhetra (eternally argued over by scholars, of course) encourages, IMO, a system in which the mass of citizen males in assembly are conditioned to give assent to policies devised by an elite class (gerontes + kings). The US Constitution differs in important ways. /6— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

simonton seems like a pretty dope lecturer. it’s nice that he is engaging with his students on the potential longue duree approach that can be taken to see the american constitution. i mean, my only exposure to studies of the constitution seems to be pointed to the world bounded within the legal text which is… not so much of a world at the end of the day.

And in any case it is important to highlight the extent to which the US founders intentionally rejected ancient Greek models of government, finding them too direct and unstable. The Rhetra and the Athenian constitution played almost no role in drafting the Constitution. /7— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

In part, of course, because the Aristotelian Ath Pol had not yet been discovered. But even if it had, I seriously doubt the Founders would have found it attractive. And this gets to the supposed inheritance of Greek ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy by “the West.” /8— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

this is just the pretext for what he is really getting at. that being the problems faced with conservative historiographies rooted in classic studies. and oh gurl, he got so real with us:

IMO, any account that tries to draw a straightforward connection is seriously lacking in historical accuracy and nuance. Early modern republicans did not typically look to the Greeks for models (Rousseau and Sparta being an exception). /9— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

Indeed, the whole idea that “the West” unproblematically took up the Greek mantle of democracy is just wrong: (Greek) democracy was largely a dirty word until people like George Grote began its rehabilitation in the mid-19th century. (@Kleisthenes2 knows this well.) /10— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

In general, see Jennifer Tolbert Roberts’ book on “Athens on Trial”: it was a long, hard process for the idea of the Athenian democracy being a positive model to gain acceptance, and for quite contingent historical and political reasons. /11— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

This brings me to a final point: proponents of a “pro-Western Civilization” narrative in Classics seem to me to engage in a rather sloppy, selective reading of the historical record, in which “freedom+democracy+capitalism+the West” comes in a too-neat and tidy package. /12— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

After all, for the century between 1815 and 1915, the Conservative Order in Europe defended what it thought of as the values of Christendom (God, family, property, monarchy) against the rising tide of liberalism, sovereign parliaments, written constitutions, etc. /13— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

To say nothing of socialism! Which even liberal orders attempted for a long time to stave off using property requirements for the franchise. Universal male suffrage was only begrudgingly bestowed. There is nothing inherent in “the West” that made this inevitable. /14— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

And anyway, as I hope I’ve already made clear, there were developments in Europe that the proponents of “Western Civ” conspicuously leave out: socialism, first and foremost, but also feminism, nationalism, even environmentalism, etc. /15— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

One can assess these developments however one wants. But whittling them away to leave a supposedly natural core of “freedom+democracy+capitalism” is a political choice, not one attuned to the complexity of history. /16— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

What does it mean for these proponents that some of these other developments in European history, such as national, racism, and fanatical anti-Bolshevism, led “the West” to tear itself (and many others) apart in the conflagration that was WWII? /17— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

The world is too complicated, and the stakes are too high, to formulate a self-serving conception of “the West,” its achievements, and its supposed connection to Classical antiquity and to pat ourselves on the back. In fact it protests too much. /19— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

What a lot of these proponents seem to want, IMO, is reassurance that their own particular (assumed) identity remains valid, in fact remains at the top of the political pecking order, in a time of uncertainty and change. /20— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

In that respect the demand that Classicists somehow make clear and even celebrate the present’s debt to the ancient past strikes me as reactionary in the most literal sense: they are reacting (negatively) to a world in which other groups and identities are gaining a voice. /21— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

no tea no shade to attasians but.. this thread is amazing! so relevant to islamic studies as well, which is fixated on theological explanations of history without getting it touch with archives that reveal more complex aspects of the muslim world.

when i embarked into an interest in philology of malay manuscripts, i was quite unsettled by the strange aversion to read manuscripts beyond the narratives that contain within them. i’ve come across many writings, mostly dominated by islamic studies scholars who are often trained with an orientalist lens, largely neglecting the historical and cultural contexts of which these texts exist.

thank goodness i had someone like my supervisor teach me about the radically different approaches that can be taken to interpret malay manuscripts from the precolonial period.

i would like to go into why i find syed naquib al-attas’ views on the islamization of the malay archipelago somewhat problematic, and requires further discussion. this is because i am not inclined to the perspective that you tell the entire history of religion in a region by just linguistic analysis and orientalist tropes about other religions like hinduism and buddhism.

back to simonton (2019), i liked that he ended his thread with some references to authors.

A final thought: this thread, fwiw, benefited from the work of (i.a.) Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Simon Schama, Eric Hobsbawm, Richard Evans, Donald Sassoon, and Ian Kershaw. So it’s not that historians aren’t reading and appreciating European history: just different lessons drawn.— Matt Simonton (@ProfSimonton) March 1, 2019

i am quite glad i’m not in the social circle for islamic discourse because i don’t know if i can hold conversation with people who are quite set on al-attas’ convictions. i for one believe in the continuities of the past and that not everything gets entirely displaced into disappearance. perhaps they evolve into something else, but history is far more resilient than that.

hot dogs were haram?¿ a brief semiological analysis.

rofl i was on the phone with my boyfriend last night. we recalled that time i wrote my first assignment in university. it was a 500 word essay for the class “introduction to cultural studies” which i took in my first year. i was so nervous about it. surprisingly this short was graded well and my lecturer even told me there was a lot of potential to expand it. i didn’t because i was too occupied with other matters.

anyway, i am archiving it on this space. who knows if i might revisit it in the near future:

semiology is the study of the systems of signs and how meanings are produced in our culture. according to the father of modern semiology, ferdinand de sassure, linguistics is composed of an interaction between signs, signifiers and the signified.

the philosopher, roland barthes notes that ‘any semiology postulates a relation between two terms, a signifier and a signified’. 1 barthes criticized sassure for only looking at denotation, and neglected connotation in his investigation of meaning-making in popular culture.

in semiotics, denotation and connotation are useful terms that describe the relationship between the signifier and its signified. this deepens the analytic distinction that makes up two types of the signified: “a denotative signified and a connotative signified”. 2

denotation means the literal meaning of a sign while connotation is its secondary meaning. both are crucial in comprehending the value of a certain concept or idea in its projection. intriguingly, such complexities in the representation of meanings can be observed in everyday life and allows us to reflect on the state of a society’s ideals and perceptions.

for instance, the recent issue with the renaming of auntie anne’s “pretzel dog” to “pretzel sausage” with malaysian religious authorities. This was because “dog” was deemed as inappropriate and offensive as some muslims see dogs as unclean. 3

even though “dog” denotes the canine species, it also has a long history of connoting sausages. however, this signification might have disappeared in the context of malaysian-muslim controversies. an explanation to this could be the nature of islamic discourse taking place, which has witnessed a rise in literalist interpretations of ideologies.

as much as “the process of signification” appears systematically universal, uncertainties lie with its possible outcomes as the signified relies on different experiences, places and histories.

References

1 Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. 2 nd edition. London: Routledge, pg 103.
2 Chandler, D. (2014). Semiotics for Beginners: Denotation, Connotation and Myth. Available at http://visual-
memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem06.html (Date accessed 21/20/2016)
3 Murad, D. (2016). Rename “Pretzel Dog” to “Pretzel Sausage”, Jakim tells Auntie Anne’s. Available at
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/10/18/rename-pretzel-dog-to-pretzel-sausage-jakim-tells-auntie-
anne/ (Date accessed 21/20/2016)