Issues in Malay Postcolonial Literature: Before and After Independence

18/10/2007 - 15:30

18 October 2007
15.30 - 17.00 hrs

Seminar by Associate Professor Associate Professor Suhaimi Abdul Aziz, Deputy dean of Graduate Studies and research, School of Humanities,Universiti sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia.

Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar organised in cooperation with KITLV & ISIM

Venue: KITLV, Reuvensplaats 2, 2311 BE, Leiden
Room 138, 15.30 - 17.00

This lecture will discuss several issues pertaining  to postcolonialism in novels written by a few Malaysian writers before and after independence (1957). In literary perspectives, the periods before and after independence are two different eras. Nonetheless, in literary terms they are interelated as each era has its own unique impact on the writers of Malay novels as well as on the novels themselves. The lecture will look at the two different eras and examine a wide  spectrum of issues characterizing Malaysian novels written during those periods. Several novels of the two periods such as those written by Ishak Haji Muhammad,  Arena Wati dan Faisal Tehrani shall be examined. They shall be examined within the postcolonial literary theories. Among the issues to be discussed are otherness which includes identity and difference, resistance,   hybridity,  representation and meaning.  

For more information please contact: Saskia Jans, s.jans@let.leidenuniv.nl