THE mood for change is endemic.
The Malaysian university community has been central to the debate and expectations for a new nation. The euphoria has not ended. Various commentators have continued to express concerns on the state of universities from their role and function in a new space to the ethics of academic culture.
Like anything new, academics jumped on the bandwagon with their diagnosis and prognosis. Much can be said and done to the dynamics of the campus from the appointment of vice-chancellors, chairmanship and composition of university boards, to issues on pedagogy, research, publication and authorship.
Many have raised concerns on the appointment and promotion of professors, relevance of a ministry/authority to administer higher education, and the independence of universities. One commentator recently said that Malaysia universities suffered from two “great problems” — one is intellectual imperialism, and the other, academic mediocrity. Both can be attributed to the lack of intellectual leadership in Malaysian campuses.
Intellectual imperialism refers to the state of knowledge where academics imbibe ideas from the West. Sociologist Syed Farid Alatas from the National University of Singapore points to knowledge superpowers such as the United States, United Kingdom and France dominating the world in the contribution of new ideas and concepts to the social and human sciences.
It is a case of not developing theories and concepts based on Malaysian data. Much of what Malaysian academics and their postgraduate students do are naive empiricism without appropriating the data generated, and the corpus as to its sociological and historical contexts to develop substantive thought on Malaysian society and identity(ies). There has been gross neglect of previous works and literature.
In this regard, much can be learned (or unlearned) from the litany of studies made on Malaysian social and electoral behaviour — either on new perspectives on Malaysian society, or a reassessment of research methodologies themselves, used on the object of study.
For example, Syed Farid made reference to the concept of “aliran” or cultural streams developed by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz. That concept became a central idea in Indonesia anthropology. Geertz was structuring the organisation of Javanese culture, religious orientation and world view. We should also account for his famous framing of the theatre state, viz precolonial 19th century Bali and stretching the concept to Indonesia — or perhaps Malaysia too, in the intervening years through the return of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In this respect, I wish to draw attention to the problem of intellectual leadership in light of developing and sustaining an alternative discourse in the humanities and social sciences — a perspective (as a proper noun). Malaysian universities must also be critical of received knowledge. In my last article titled Knowledge Reproduction: The Value of Criticism (May 30),
I wrote on the need to engage in a critical discourse of the corpus itself, and that we should start distrusting our disciplines. This is where intellectual leadership comes in.
It does not naively mean the first author out of three or 30 authors to an article or a book, and especially with the culture of attaching (voluntarily or otherwise) one’s name to a piece of work. It means challenging a body of scholarship through immersing oneself in theories and concepts, and interrogating them in reflexive terms viz oneself and one’s society. There is also a collective dimension to this — not merely grouping oneself in research or publication.
This is what the Filipinos call “pantayong pananaw” — a descriptive concept, pertaining to any social collectivity possessing a relatively unified and internally articulated linguistic-cultural structure of communication and interaction and/or a sense of oneness of purpose and existence (Ramon Guillermo, 2003). It refers to a certain style of thought and way of speaking based largely on a critique of colonial discursive strategies which up to now still proliferate in textbooks and more scholarly works. Malaysia academics and scholars have been largely nonchalant about the contextual origins and history of much of their disciplines and fields of study.
Guillermo explained the meaning of “pantayong pananaw” by first referring to the Filipino “tayo” and “kami”, which means “we”/”us”. In Bahasa Melayu, the same distinction holds for the pair, “kita” and “kami”. “Tayo”, which is described as the inclusive form of “we”, refers to a collectivity composed of both the speakers and listeners in a communication context. “Kami”, which is described as the exclusive form of “we”, refers to a collectivity composed only of those who are speaking and does not include the receivers of the message. The word “pantayo” was formed by the combination of the root word tayo and the prefix pan-.
Hence, the word “pantayo” could roughly be interpreted to mean “from-us-for-us”. The other half of the phrase, “pananaw”, means “perspective”. So “pantayong pananaw” is equivalent to the rather awkward “from-us-for-us perspective”. “Pantayo” refers to a self-subsistent dialogical circle consisting of active (speaking) subjects. Some examples provided by Guillermo, in the Filipino context, are as follows:
•“Discourses of influence” which attributes the origins of both the distinguishing elements and the motive forces of Philippine history and culture to “external” influences. These are also manifested as symptoms of unease or discontent with “one’s own” culture and of a constant striving to legitimise it by attributing its origin to some “more elevated” sources. The point of reference of discourses of influence is usually the originating culture while the receiving culture is merely analysed in relation to its adequacy to or divergence from the original (for example, “Maria is beautiful because her father was half-Spanish”;
“The Filipino is a jumble of traits from India, China, Europe, and America.”). Discourses which focus on the purported “lack of identity” of Filipinos is an auxiliary discourse which accomplishes the preliminary act of emptying Filipino identity the better to fill it to the brim with influences.
• “First Filipino” discourses which reduced Philippine history to a delayed repetition of western history (for example, “Juan dela Cruz was the first Filipino pilot.”). Similar to this type of discourse is the constant Toynbee-like parallel-mongering between the Philippines and the West which presupposes that the western comparison would render the topic more intelligible to the reader than if it were just left to itself (for example, “Gabriela Silang was the Joan of Arc of the Philippines.”). Once again, the point of reference is still “the West”.
•Discourses of the “Discovery” (for example, “There is no more significant event in Philippine history than the discovery of the islands by the great Magellan.”).
•“Reactive” discourses which merely correct colonial misconceptions about Filipinos and Philippine history, thereby remaining trapped in a discursive dependency with colonial discourse (for example, “Filipinos are not like you say. We are also intelligent and civilised.”). Expressions of condemnation or idealisation of Philippine culture as contrasted with colonial and western values can be related to this type of discourse.
Academics and scholars in Malaysia may well learn from our Southeast Asian neighbour in the Malay archipelago and factor that in their respective corpus. In this sense, colonial discursive strategies have been rendering the erstwhile colonised “sawo matang” (brown-skinned) peoples into a heteronomous and inert entity. Malaysia has made history post-May 9. Malaysian universities — scholars and intellectuals — must provide that leadership in theorising and conceptualising on that history. Parroting history uncritically only reinforces an external perspective to our being.
Apart from the problem of history, “pantayong pananaw” displays some of the problems of approaches, methodology and ideology. It is not linguistic or theoretical nativism. Some have argued that “pantayong pananaw” is a non-essentialist alternative for constructing knowledge and identity.
The Filipinos have the word “kasaysayan” (history) which is derived from the root word “saysay” meaning “sense” or “meaning” and hence “meaningful narrative”. In the coming years, I see this as critical space to be theorised in Malaysian universities in rejuvenating a “stagnant” corpus in the humanities and social sciences (and in science too). Is the mood for change a false one? Or is it business as usual? I am sure, we do not need the Education Minister to tell us what to do.
The writer is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research and International Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the first recipient of the Honorary President Resident Fellowship at the Perdana Leadership Foundation.
Email him at ahmadmurad@usm.my
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