Other Ways of Remembering
Lye Tuck-Po
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
Memory-making, especially the making of social memories, is an integral part of the process of building commitment to a shared future. Inevitably, as dominant state-building narratives become entrenched, selected aspects of the past become marginalized. It isn’t just the content of these narratives, but how these memories are made—different ways of remembering—that become excluded from public consciousness. In this lecture investigate what these “other ways” of remembering might be, by focusing on indigenous traditions of memory-making in Southeast Asia. In particular, I examine the interactions of environment and memory among Malaysian hunter-gatherers as well as other ways of remembering that are largely sidelined in dominant political discourse in the region, and discuss whether trying to counter these exclusions may open up other exclusionary practices.
November 18, 2015