Lesson of 'listen, listen, listen'
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As a student of Cultural-Philosophical Studies with a passion in radical educational change framed within the context of cybernating-hypermodern societies such as Malaysia, I see the "Bawani-Zohra Affair" as emblematic of a nation gone berserk on the issue of freedom of speech and the culture of dialogue and public discourse.
We are in an 'amuck-latah' mood. The nation, at least in cyberspace, is furious (amuck) of what happened, and the protagonist of the propaganda machine fumbled big-time (latah) assuming that the teaching techniques of the "top-down, humiliate-first, no-apologies later" of many a Biro Tata Negara speaker can still be deployed unreservedly onto university students at the time when amateur videos can go viral, when tweets can flow like a tsunami, and when Facebook pages can be created in a fraction of seconds.
That's the mistaken assumption - that the Frankenstein called "social media technology" will also not run amuck helping those silenced to have their poetic justice, and those humiliated to become an honourable being raised to the level of stardom, overnight.
It is said that at times, you do not need to find the revolution - for the revolution will find you. The revolution found both Bawani and Zohra in such an ‘absurd' way, such as in many of the plots of French surrealist dramas like Eugene Ionesco's rhinoceros running wild on the city streets, and Kafka's character moving from desolation to awareness in "Metamorphosis".
The timing was perfect, like that storm brewing right after the almost-a-million Malaysian march to take over Putrajaya; after the Deepak drama which was over-played, overdosing even the older folks; after the successes of all those Bersih rallies, and many other watersheds upon watersheds of consciousness-raising events, and ultimately, after the last hurrah circa GE13 - all these ripened the relevance of the fateful "Bawani-Zohra" rendezvous.
Hence, Malaysians saw not only an explosion of anger, but one that fuelled tremendous amounts of creative products, mainly in the realm of multimedia (music videos, Facebook and Internet posters, audio and video materials, and the production of other forms of creative artifacts inspired by the mantra "listen-listen-listen...").
That is my observation, albeit too, as a 'participant-observer' who managed to contribute to the dialogue through my public writings here on Facebook, and in my other column in Malaysia-Today.
I have always found examples of the chaos and complexity theory at work in these kinds of phenomena; the "butterfly effect" of Malaysian public discourse, which must be framed in its most kaleidoscopic and multidimensional way.
Mind-controlling machinery?
In this case, a simple few minutes of verbal exchange in a dialogue on a campus situated way up in the "boonies" as the Appalachians in Ohio would say, can have far-reaching impacts up till now, leading to even the fall of the Barisan Nasional regime that has, for the last 30 years, been using the universities as a place wherein the human mind - of student, staff, and even faculty - would essentially need to "shut up and listen-listen-listen".
At the same time, the leaders will be carrying big sticks and speaking not-so-gently, so that the entire mind-controlling machinery can function effectively while being devoid of critical sensibility.
For too long, society has allowed such stupefication to happen via the work of government-controlled propaganda-producing agencies trained in Soviet-styled mind-bending, mind-numbing, and mind-emptying strategies so that the dying ideology of one-race dominancy in the self-glorified, ill-intentioned ‘1Malaysian' sloganism can prevail.
Even when the world outside has mutated multiple times and gone through the process of adaptations as a consequence of globalisation and the continuing relevancy of cosmopolitanism.
I don't know, these are my ramblings for the day, folks... my Joycean stream-of-consciousness mood speaking:
Watching how the Mandelbrott set of Malaysian universities will play out; watching how the butterflies in this absurd drama will flap their wings; and watching how the ancient Malay dialectics of deadly dualism will be spoken.
The "amuck-latah" syndrome will be transmutated into newer forms in a hypermodern society - in a bipolar Malaysia trying to live in accordance with an ill-constructed ‘1Malaysia' while society is firmly destroyed by implosive devices akin to the famed ‘C4' used to end the life of a young Mongolian mother of a very young child some time ago, when truth was still a corpse waiting to come alive.
I don't know, but there are now minds in those Malaysian universities that are refusing to just "listen-listen-listen" ...until the truth explodes and destroys the creators of falsehood.
Please share your thoughts... humbly of course.
But where do we go from here?
6 comments:
we can go anywhere and still nowhere. just as the internet was let loose onto the general public by MM with no censorship, it have opened up the minds of many malaysians old and young alike. we now dare question, simply on the prefix that we are exposed to so many oversights and reading critically substantiated facts, that we are prone to evaluate ourselves and standings. still in our moment of dazed, not realising how and where we should be going on this fracas. perhaps, this will spun a new generation of people ready to be heard and our elders alike will stand up to take notice, and maybe move forward from george orwell's 1984 which we have remained stationary all these while.
The course has been set. It has momentum and will continue along its appointed path.
It will take another bigger force to alter its inertia.
The cosmic order and hence this world is a dynamic self organising system. It goes where the sum total of the forces of its living components and its non living components move it, changing at every instant as a composite must change with its ever changing smaller and smaller constituents.There is no Great Cosmic Mind or Maker that sets its course or destination. It goes where it goes and it will go where it will go. Who is to say what is right or wrong? What we as human beings need to do is to express the life force and life values in each of us and that we are able to do so because we can be allowed to live our own life as we want it to be and not to live someone else's life . Recognising at the same time that in order form this to happen we cannot and must not curtail or infringe on this similar rights of others.If freedom to paths of growth is stymied or corrupted there will be generated a backlash corresponding in kind and vigour to what was introduced to the natural dynamic system. This is the way of the cosmic order and disorder and that is why governments not matter how powerful fall!
I believe we've only just begun this process of "democratization" triggered off in no small way by the emergence of the Internet and the freedom and "power" it offers; the lid that's been suppressing dissent all these years has been blown off - and while we haven't found the necessary maturity to deal with the issues as yet, and while it's probably going to be a slow and painful process, we are groping our way forward in the dark in a sense; thankfully there are a few sensible voices - like yourself to guide us along the way to a new, different Malaysia; We could go either one of two ways - a step back to a very fundamental society or to another open, functional, inclusive nation; Alas, it would probably be too late for the likes of me in my early 50's but the future of our children is at stake; and what kind of country we leave them with depends very much on what we decide to do today.
A very illuminating piece, and provocative too..
Thank you Dr Azly, for those sparks of genius of yours!
Zohrah is no longer a member of the Indian Muslim party, KIMMA, says its leader. That itself is revealing of the mindset of this so-called "lecturer" when she attempted to shout down Bawani. Zorah has to speak in the manner to ensure that her "Malayness" is not questioned. Not very different from Mahathir who in his Singaapore University application described himself as "Indian". When he became PM he went on to describe Tamil schools as "pointless" among other things.
Both forget that the essence of "Malayness" has always been its culture of being polite in such a sophisticated manner that it invariably seduced the non-Malays including the Brits from Colonial times.
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