Cerita: Kedudukan Dan Peranannya Dalam Karya Kreatif Penulis Wanita Sebelum Merdeka

This article analyses the novelette Jiwa Kebangsaan in order to highlight its structural priority, whether to foreground story-making or discourse-developing, besides identifying the narrative devices which the text employs. To that end, the article makes use of Malaysia’s home-grown theoretical framework Persuratan Baru, in particular its distinction between ‘story’ and ‘knowledge’. The distinction can be detected through several means, the most important of which is the use of discourse, defined as substantive and academic arguments, whose creative inclusion is achieved through providing adequate narrative space in the story being unfolded. On the other hand, story, which serves to construct a tale, revolves round and operates on the narrative level and fills up its narrative space with narrative elements. The analysis shows how the text studied employs such narrative elements as character and characterization as well as conflict to move the story forward, at the same time that it closes up its narrative space to discourse, albeit opportunities to do so are available. The analysis makes clear the fact that the principle of story-making structures Jiwa Kebangsaan, at the same time as terms such as ‘issues’, ‘problems’, ‘themes’, ‘preoccupations’ and the like are used interchangeably with ‘story’. These terms, in turn, are defined as ‘knowledge’. In making no distinction between story and knowledge, Jiwa Kebangsaan assumes that the construction of a story fulfills the function of knowledge-dissemination. The story so constructed is itself perceived and touted as knowledge. The article argues that such a claim is academically untenable.