ASEAN

Can ASEAN accept its Complex Past and Present: Talk at ASEAN LOGICS conference IIUM 2 Feb 2010

(This is a summary of the talk I gave at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) on 2 February 2010, at the ASEAN LOGICS conference. The panel was addressing the question of Addressing the Gulf/Divide in ASEAN over Cultural, Racial and Religious Differences. Ive tried to reproduce my talk verbatim below.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow scholars,

Allow me to begin by thanking the organisers of this event for their kind invitation to speak to you today. I am particularly happy to learn that this event was organised entirely by the students of IIUM themselves.

As this is a meeting of scholars, let us behave as scholars and address the issue at hand from a scholarly point of view.

We have before us a proposition that ought to be understood and deconstructed objectively and rationally. The question that has been set before us is โ€˜how to address the gulf in ASEAN over the question of cultural, racial and religious differencesโ€™. So let us begin by addressing the proposition itself, and let us understand the nature of the question that has been posed.

If we were to look at the theme closely we can see that it comprises of several ideas/subjects that are ontologically and existentially distinct.

Firstly we begin with the question of ASEAN, which ought to be identified for/as what it is: ASEAN is fundamentally a pact between nation-states, with an identity and history that may have been shaped by variable historical contingencies but which nonetheless has a specific identity that is unique and distinct by virtue of the particular set of variables that occasioned its creation.

ASEAN is a pact between postcolonial nation-states, and as such has, from the outset, been an arrangement between governments and political entities. Let us also remind ourselves of the context of ASEANโ€™s emergence: It was created in 1967, at a time when the Cold War was at its peak and a time when the founding nations of ASEAN wished to remain neutral and not be dragged into the violent oppositional dialectics of the confrontation between the Eastern and Western blocs. Thus from its genesis it has been an instrument that has served the prerogatives of governments and nation-states.

But we must remember that ASEAN began from the premise of then already-constituted postcolonial nation-states that accepted their political and territorial frontiers as a given. This is the legacy of colonialism and a reflection of how the colonial impact had radically altered the geographical and cultural terrain of Southeast Asia.

We also need to distinguish the difference between two entities: Precolonial Southeast Asia, which has a history dating back several thousand years and which was in many respects a more fluid and cosmopolitan environment than what we see around us today; and ASEAN which came much later and which operates of the Westphalian logic of narrow national interest and political territoriality.

The modern nation-state, based as it is on the compartmentalised logic of national interest, national identity, citizenship and national aspirations and goals, is therefore an instrument that serves certain, though not all, ambitions. We need to remember that as an instrument or a tool the modern nation-state can only do some things and not others. Like a car which is a tool that we use to get from A to B, we can only expect so much from a state as well. Cars cannot be used to make bread, plough fields, or take us to space. Nor can states be expected to deal with things that lie beyond the scope of their capabilities.

The other part of the question posed before us deals with three variables: Culture, Race and Religion.

From the outset let us remove one of these variables now: the category of Race. For we, as scholars, ought to realise that the concept of โ€˜raceโ€™ is of dubious academic/scholarly worth and does not stand before the test of scientific enquiry. It may be a truism to say this, but there is only one race, and that is the human race. To suggest that there are different โ€˜racesโ€™ would lead us down the path of narrow and subjective racial profiling based on spurious and non-scientific notions of inherited genetic or essentialised differences that have no basis in biology. Yet we also know that the theory of essentialised racial differences was and remains one of the negative legacies we have inherited from the colonial era when the project of imperialism and colonisation sought to justify itself on weak pseudo-scientific theories of racial differences and the notion of โ€˜superiorโ€™ versus โ€˜inferiorโ€™ races. As such race theory and the notion of racial difference is not only scientifically unsound but also politically dubious.

Which leaves us with two other variables: Culture and Religion.

Here when we address Culture and Religion in BOLD capitals thus, we are really addressing, in the most abstract terms, the normative behaviour of communities in terms of their life-styles and belief systems. That societies that exist in isolation from others will eventually evolve modes of collective behaviour that are unique and distinct to them is a norm that is generally observed everywhere, and as such we need not be surprised by the presence of different cultural and religious systems among the respective communities in Southeast Asia.

Now let us take a walk back in history and interrogate the circumstances of the evolution and development of this region: As noted above, Southeast Asia has a history that dates back several thousand years and the historian will remind us that for centuries the peoples and communities of Southeast Asia have been the inheritors of a common shared repertoire of beliefs, cultures, languages, the plastic arts, modes of commerce and social organisation and so on. Southeast Asiaโ€™s richness lies in part in its complex past, and its cosmopolitan character.

Yet it is vital for us to remember that Southeast Asiaโ€™s development to what it is today was and is not something that is historically determinate or driven along a teleological path. History may lend the impression of direction and purpose, but that is only because history is always (and can only be) read backwards from the standpoint of the present.

However contemporary historians such as Simon Schama and philosophers like Dieter Senghass have shown that historical developments elsewhere have likewise been shaped by historical contingencies and that a deterministic view of evolution needs to be interrogated further. (Senghass has noted for instance that the development of Europe into the land of post-industrial Enlightenment and the Social Contract today was not a linear development, but one that was constantly contested with major upheavals and obstacles along the way, such as the rise of Nazism and Fascism in the 1930s-40s that could have led to the development of a very different Europe altogether.)

In the context of the region we are more familiar with, we need to recall that thousands of years ago, the peoples of Southeast Asia who lived in the age of Pagan, Ayodhaya, Sukothai, Langkasuka, Srivijaya, Majapahit and Mataram likewise never envisaged that their region would one day be carved up into nation-states, and certainly never anticipated the creation of ASEAN.

It is therefore imperative that we do not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of historical revisionism, and to back-date the creation and formation of ASEAN to the pre-colonial era.

On the same note, we should also note that the cultural and religio-social fluidity of the past was very different from the differences and plurality we see around us today, where the modern post-colonial nation-state lays claim to not only political geography and territoriality, but also to โ€˜nationalโ€™ and โ€˜nationalisedโ€™ culture, language, religion etc. The recent debate over whether Batik โ€˜belongedโ€™ to Indonesia, Malaysia or Singapore is a case in point: For if we were to interrogate the terms of this debate closer we can see how historically unfounded and ridiculous it was/is, considering that batik has existed in the Southeast Asian region for centuries, even before the creation of modern states like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore!

To expect or suggest that ASEAN โ€“ as a pact between nation-states and governments โ€“ can โ€˜dealโ€™ with such contentious issues is perhaps over-stretching the limits and capabilities of the state and what the modern state can do. Lest it be forgotten, modern nation-states cannot artificially โ€˜bring people togetherโ€™ or even make people like each other. States cannot legislate laws to compel people to understand and accept each other. States cannot even legislate laws to compel us to smile at our neighbours!

BUT- what the nation-states of ASEAN can do is to open up, deepen and strengthen the structural and institutional bonds and infrastructure that may allow for an organic, natural and spontaneous contact and interaction among the peoples of Southeast Asia who wish to learn more of each other and who are comfortable with addressing the differences in culture, religion etc that we see in the region. In practical terms, this would mean the governments of ASEAN working in their respective countries to expand the domain of Southeast Asian studies (particularly in the realm of culture, history, comparative religion etc.) and to help sustain, nurture and develop the communicative infrastructure that is slowly bringing the peoples of ASEAN closer together. (Such as the relatively new phenomenon of cheap airline travel across Southeast Asia with fewer visa restrictions on the free movement of Southeast Asian citizens, and with that the freer movement of ideas as well.)

At one point however, we โ€“ the peoples as well as the governments of ASEAN โ€“ will have to understand one thing: ASEANโ€™s contemporary history is built upon a bigger, deeper, greater history of Southeast Asia that predates ASEAN by centuries. But for ASEAN to foster mutual understanding it must also foster mutual respect and above all a mature attitude among its citizens with regards to the question of radical difference in and among the communities of the region itself.

How, for instance, can we write a history of modern ASEAN that is not problematic? How can we write, for instance, a history of ASEAN that reconciles the conflicting views of the Thais and the Burmese; the Cambodians and the Vietnamese; the Malaysians and Singaporeans; and the Indonesians and East Timorese?

Such a complex history is needed โ€“ perhaps now more than ever โ€“ but it can only be a history, or rather histories, that is/are complex and at times in dialogue and disagreement with itself. But such is the nature of our complex region and we need to mature and accept that life in the real world is complex and replete with complexities that may not be resolved, ever. That also means that we need to understand and accept such complexities in ourselves first before we even begin to deal with the complexities beyond our shores. Looking at the state of affairs in Malaysia today, where there is much anxiety over the use and circulation of religious and cultural signifiers such as the signifier โ€˜Allahโ€™ by non-Muslims, one had to address this question bravely and honestly: If some Malaysians cannot accept that a small minority of non-Muslims have been using the word โ€˜Allahโ€™ as well for centuries, then how can we accept the historical fact and present-day reality that millions of Christians in Indonesia have also been using the signifier โ€˜Allahโ€™ for hundreds of years?

Living with ambiguity, complexity, and radical difference (i.e. differences that cannot be reconciled, hidden away or denied) is going to be the challenge for you, the younger generation of ASEAN citizens today. While dreaming of closer economic-political integration among the countries of ASEAN is and ought to be a real ambition for you to entertain, the success of that endeavour depends in large part on the possibility of the emergence of an ASEAN community as well, with a clearer sense of what ASEAN identity, citizenship and consciousness is. As ASEANโ€™s evolution is an on-going process and will constantly be exposed to external variables, we need not anticipate or artificially configure that outcome now. But in my opinion one factor that will have to be taken into account is our capacity to be mature enough to accept our complex past and present as a fundamental feature of who and what we are: Citizens of a complex ASEAN whose identities are constantly being negotiated and who have to learn to accept the differences in ourselves as well as others.

Thank you.

Source: http://www.othermalaysia.org/2010/02/03/can-asean-accept-its-complex-past-and-present-talk-at-asean-logics-conference-iium-2-feb-2010/

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