Rizal and the rethinking of the analytics of Malayness @ Issue contents

ABSTRACT This paper revisits Jose Rizal’s thoughts relevant to the Malays to extract insights and implications which may be useful in rethinking the parameters of the ongoing debates on Malayness. I argue that these terms need to be rethought because they restrict even the most well-intentioned scholarly efforts to unsettle the foundation of the ethnic or race-based politics that they seek to neutralize.

Dr. Rommel A. Curaming is Assistant Professor in History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). He is the Programme Leader of the History, Social Science and International Studies Programmes, as well as Coordinator of Southeast Asian Studies Programme at the UBD. He completed a PhD at the Australian National University (ANU) with a thesis that compares the state-historian relations in Indonesia and the Philippines during the Suharto and Marcos periods. Prior to joining UBD in late 2010, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and La Trobe University under the Endeavour Australia Award. His research interests include history and memory of political violence, the politics of writing and public consumption of history, comparative historiography, transnationalism, heritage-making, place-making, and knowledge politics and state-intellectual relations in Islands Southeast Asia. He has published articles and reviews in international refereed journals such as Critical Asian Studies, South East Asia Research, Time and Society, Sojourn, Philippine Studies, Kritika Kultura, and Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, among others.