Paradoxes of Malaysian Literature and “Collective Individuality” in Theorising National Identity

After 56 years of Independence, Malaysia still continues to struggle with its efforts in constructing an amicable ‘national identity.’ The struggle especially centred on the ‘one nation one language’ policy, which later led to another contentious determinant of national identity, that of ‘national literature.’ Malaysian literature, due to the nation’s colonial experience, consequentially falls under the category of ‘postcolonial literature.’ This comes with its attendant baggage of also being considered as peripheral literature, or emergent literature, or Third World literature. In other words, it is categorically nonwestern literature. The question this gives rise to is: which direction should Malaysian literature take in asserting a ‘true’ postcolonial identity? Should it continue to be one that insists on reinforcing the ‘one nation one language’ ideal with modern Malay literature (written by predominantly Malay writers) representing collectively the nation’s identity? Or should it recognize those strong voices of dissent as the ‘true postcolonial’, those voices of (especially) non-Malay writers who insist on writing in the language of the coloniser (English)? This paper considers these positions by using the German Romantic ideal of “collective individuality” as its measure of how far Malaysian literature (represented by both modern Malay literature and Malaysian literature in English) has truly come to its own as worthy of being called ‘postcolonial’ literature. In doing so, the paper also highlights the problematic term ‘national literature.’