Original Recipe, Hot & Spicy? - The Limits of Nostalgia
Around this time of the year, we gorge ourselves, willingly or otherwise, at the buffet table of unlimited servings of sepia images and faded texts; this year with a little more pomp and frenzy, partly spearheaded by officialdom to put out a good show and partly fueled by the government’s recent reaffirmation that Malaysia is an Islamic state.While there is ample critique of the government’s use and abuse of ‘history’, not much has been said or written on contradictory reactions, bordering talismanic and involving equally solemn rituals of:- (1) whipping out the Federal Constitution (original) (2) reciting the Rukun Negara; (3) bringing forth the spectre of the ‘Social Contract’ (original) and (4) invoking the spirit of the (original) Merdeka Declaration.
Laypersons, for wont of being left out of the narrative of the Other, would proffer their memories of days-gone-by, set in the timeline of “30, 40 years ago”, where they once had friends (invariably inserted with the holy trinity ‘Malays, Chinese, Indian’) over to their homes, shared food, had a few rounds of gin and tonic, then walked to the nearby Chinese kopitiam to shoot the wind.
Not any longer, they mourned. It was so much better then, they cried.
Funny thing is that, this is not the memory I possess, as much as I have dug deep and far. I remember having Jaspal, Gowri, Azleena and Norashikin over at my birthdays as clearly as I can recall helping to stockpile food lest things go bad in the capital city, and my father being drafted to guard against nocturnal communist incursions. I can only nod and make conciliatory sounds when told this tale over and over again. Often times I wonder, who would have the luxury of killing time and sitting in a coffee shop, or who could afford gin and tonic, and relax in the time of the Emergency.
And increasingly these days, narrators look a lot younger but they tell the same tale, only substituting the timeline with “10, 20 years ago”.
It appears we have a pathological attachment of an idealized and edited past, collectively experienced by a particular social classes and replicated through the act of story-telling. Nostalgia, first suggested by a Swiss doctor in the 17th century to describe what was then thought to be a medical affliction, has become somewhat a national past time.
Memory is discordant, chaotic. It is largely illusory. Yet we spend time and energy to conjure, shape and mold it to our desired picture, to weave a coherent narrative in order to relieve one’s unease of an unjust present.
It is ironic that it is only here that we are comfortable with wielding this marginal power, relative to that of the state, to pick and choose fragments of our past, both as an individual and a collective, to layer our present.
This exercise may not be entirely useful. Naturally, I am not ascribing an ahistorical take on politics but often times nostalgia proves more reactionary than emancipatory, where the link between nostalgia and the preservation of privileges is disguised, beyond that of the regular compartmentalization of class and ethnicity.
Take for instance, whenever the discourse of the past and of Merdeka, with all necessary fetished trinkets that are the above points (1) to (4), is employed and brought to the fore, I am conflicted.
Can we be bound by a Declaration (original) made by a bourgeois class of ‘forefathers’?
Are we to subscribe to a Social Contract (original), which, while possessing the ability to assuage the fears of those who hold secularism as their core, underlines the trade-off between then migrant communities and ‘natives’, that is citizenship for minorities in exchange of unquestionable recognition of a dominant hegemonic class of citizens?
What is it that we are reaffirming when we recite the Rukun Negara - yes, that template from General Suharto’s Pancasila?
And what is it really, that we are brandishing as a shield? The Federal Constitution (original) or the mutated and mutable edition (up to 40 amendments to date), as waved about in the weekend spectacle of the Malaysian Chinese Association assembly?
We must take it with a pinch of salt, all those who claim that the time of Mahathir was better than what we have now. It loathes many of us to relive those years, just as there are many who can only shake their heads when they choke over other past benevolent leaders (not) and candy-flossed past. This ‘malaise de la memoire’ prevents us from seizing the present and transforming our future.
We can ill-afford to live in an imagined world of nostalgia if we are to continue a political process of emancipation and transformation, which Marx put it most succinctly said, “Let the dead bury their dead”.
Where we stand right now, we are merely scratching the edges of the status quo, and leaving our problems for the next generation to resolve, until we too become fragments of history that never was, save, in the corners of our minds.
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7 Responses to “Original Recipe, Hot & Spicy? - The Limits of Nostalgia”
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I think you got your religions mixed up - it wasn’t Marx that said it, but Jesus who said “Let the dead bury their dead” (Luke 9:60).
I attributed it to Marx, as it was applicable in this context:-
“The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content – here the content goes beyond the phrase.”
(Chapter 1, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852)
wah! penanganan sejarah dan falsafah yg hebat! :)
Wonderful article, eli, and your criticism of the dangers of nostalgia is spot on :) Definitely right on the Mahathir years bit - more and more ppl are saying that they preferred things under Mahathir, and I think one of the main reasons why it’s happening is because we had far higher expectations of Pak Lah, and therefore, when he failed, it was particularly painful. My dad said something to this effect: at least with Mahathir you knew he was bad; with Pak Lah, he tries his best to fool you into believing that he’s not, but underneath, the stench is just as rotten. But you’re right, we should never fall into that trap - it’s too easy to look at the wonders of the Mahathir era, and forget the price paid by so many, not to mention his legacy: leaving us near-bankrupt and with higher levels of inequality than ever, thanks to his cultivation of the crony-putras. He may have made us instantly recognisable across the Third World, especially, but the price was far, far too high.
Thank you again for an immmensely thought-provoking article… I actually spent half the night awake trying to sort out my thoughts :p At first, I had this notion of defending somewhat the utility of the Constitution, and the Rukunegara, even the social contract. But then I realised that you’re actually very right. I’ve been trained to believe in the power of constitutionalism, but constitutions aren’t intrinsically valuable; they’re only of value insofar as they reflect the values integral to a nation. And the same goes, to a very great extent, for the Rukunegara, the social contract, the Declaration and our ‘forefathers’.
When we invoke all these totems, they’re just a smokescreen, a convenient substitute for invoking the values which we think the nation should hold dear. When I think that KJ should remember pillar no.5 of the Rukunegara a bit more, i’m just saying that he should remember to be more polite and less samseng (including refraining from calling us monyet), but invoking an official document to sort of strengthen my claim.
But is that really what we need right now? Invoking old documents to sanctify values held here and now? We’re a divided nation, held apart by race, religion and socio-economic status - all three gaps are widening, and badly at that.
In your words, it’s all about ‘emancipation and transformation’; we’re not solving problems, only ’scratching at the edges’, because we’re retreating behind nostalgic totems, and refusing to engage on the level that really matters - what values can we, as a nation, agree upon as the basis for our future? Our totems are useless because by their very nature, they’re amenable to every permutation you can think of. We can both look at the Constitution, and come away with rather different things, and both claim adamantly that our interpretation is THE interpretation. Happens all the time, all over the world.
So you’re absolutely right, eli - i’m going to stop talking about forefathers, and constitutions, and even the rukunegara, and start talking about freedom of religion, freedom to criticise, respect for one another, narrowing the inequality gap… let’s get obvious. No more smokescreens, no more totems, no more teddy bears. The past is an excellent teacher, but a very bad teddy bear. And growing up means leaving Teddy behind, and making your way with chin held up high, mind alert, and heart and soul ready to take on the world, if need be. Teddy will always be with us, but sometimes, you’ve got to fight your own fights. As do we all.
Spot on, Hizami. Far too often I find people cling to “the Federal Constitution” or “the social contract” without evaluating the reasons we ought to cling to them.
Our founding fathers were not infallible; neither are we. There is a reason that the Constitution makes provision for amendments to it - even the entrenched provisions are still amendable, only the process is more difficult.
This fetishism of the status quo has to stop. Things are not inherently good just because “we’ve always done it this way”. If that’s your only possible rebuttal, it’s a clear sign you’ve lost the argument, because you are effectively conceding that there is no good reason to retain something, except for the sake of tradition and nostalgia.
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