Colony, Nation, and Globalisation: Not at Home in Singaporean and Malaysian Literature
Eddie Tay
Abstract
The literature of Malaysia and Singapore, the multicultural epicentre of Asia, offers a rich body of source material for appreciating the intellectual heritage of colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia. Focusing on themes of home and belonging, this book illuminates many aspects of identity anxiety experienced in the region, and helps construct a dialogue between postcolonial theory and the Anglophone literatures of Singapore and Malaysia. A chronologically ordered selection of texts is examined including Swettenham, Bird, Maugham, Burgess, and Thumboo. This genealogy of works includes colon ... More
The literature of Malaysia and Singapore, the multicultural epicentre of Asia, offers a rich body of source material for appreciating the intellectual heritage of colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia. Focusing on themes of home and belonging, this book illuminates many aspects of identity anxiety experienced in the region, and helps construct a dialogue between postcolonial theory and the Anglophone literatures of Singapore and Malaysia. A chronologically ordered selection of texts is examined including Swettenham, Bird, Maugham, Burgess, and Thumboo. This genealogy of works includes colonial travel writings and sketches as well as contemporary diasporic novels by Malaysian and Singapore-born authors based outside their countries of origin. The premise is that home is a physical space as well as a symbolic terrain invested with social, political, and cultural meanings.
Keywords:
literature,
Malaysia,
Singapore,
multicultural epicentre of Asia,
intellectual heritage,
colonial,
postcolonial,
Southeast Asia,
home
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9789888028740 |
| Published to Hong Kong Scholarship Online: September 2011 |
DOI:10.5790/hongkong/9789888028740.001.0001 |
