Racialisation in Malaysia: Multiracialism, multiculturalism, and the cultural politics of the possible

Abstract

This article focuses on racialisation as a signifying practice and cultural process that attributes difference in Malaysia. It attempts to think with and against the concept of racialisation with an aim to add to a clearer understanding of the cultural politics of ‘race’. It focuses on the hierarchies of power and marginalisation, visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion that are built into dominant discourses and modes of knowledge production about race, citizenship, and culture in Malaysia. This article aims to show how the political mobilisation of race as a remnant of colonial governmentality disciplines social processes through the notion of multiculturalism. For this reason, it sets up state-endorsed ‘multiracialism’ and a people-driven ‘multiculturalism’ as oppositional ways of thinking about race. It concludes by briefly identifying some key drivers for cultural transformation and speculating if these people-centred processes can offer a more imaginative racial horizon.