Mar 29th 2008 04:01 pm Azly Rahman
Azly Rahman, former lecturer at University Utara Malaya, and a columnist for the online newspaper, Malaysiakini.com, was an apt line-up to Meredith Weiss, a physical example of what Weiss mentioned was an academic instrumental to commenting on the various repressions of civil society, especially since he was one of the few Malaysian academics who refused to sign the AkuJanji pledge in 2007.
Given the platform to sound his ideas, Rahman did not address his assigned topic of National Identity (although there are preliminary sketches available on his blog), but instead offered us some spots of his philosophical ideas.
What I understood from Rahman’s speech was the need to equip ourselves with knowledge, to understand the “genealogy of history and theories” and, with hints of Orwell, to militate against the “prison house of language” that politicians find recourse to so as to manipulate its audience. He brought up several “ambiguities of freedom” which poses questions such as: “Freedom from what?”, “Freedom to do what?”, Freedom after March 8?”
Rahman spoke of his philosophy of Radical Multiculturalism, which is to discover separate identities within oneself, reminiscent of Palestinian critic, Edward W. Said’s idea of discovering “the other” and not merely make assumptions about one’s innate cultural identity. He quoted the necessity of the Bumiputra policy to “evolve and intermarry with other ideas”. Given the constant definitional change of what makes effective policies, he highlighted our role “to continue to dialogue…for things we value as a culture and a race”.
Rahman also posited an Eco-philosophy, which is the return to living in symbiosis with nature. He gave examples such as persistent deforestation, which points to the danger of “fail(ing) to look at the old idea of nature and culture.” We are both “economic beings” as well as “cultural beings”, and cautioned against “capitalism and consumerism” and the subsequent neglect of altruism.
Posted by nickwong / NMF 2008