Dissertation by Fiona Lee
Papers by Fiona Lee
Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 2017
The past decade has witnessed the revival of street protest culture in Malaysia. This new wave of... more The past decade has witnessed the revival of street protest culture in Malaysia. This new wave of demonstrations arguably began in 2007, when the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) mobilised an estimated 30,000 people to march for the rights of a religious-and racialised-minority against government policies that favour bumiputera Malays. 1 Since then, street protests have been organised by a wide variety of groups and have become an increasingly common feature in Malaysia's political landscape. The most prominent of them are the Bersih [Clean] marches organised by a coalition of nongovernment organisations calling for ballot reform to ensure fair elections; to date, there have been five such rallies, each of which mobilised tens of thousands of participants. Coinciding with the early years of this new wave of protests were the general elections of 2008 and 2013, which saw record voter turnout and an unprecedented number of seats won by the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, breaking the political stronghold held by the ruling ethno-nationalist party, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), since independence. Along with these political developments, the resurgence of protest culture was seen as signalling a rise in civic participation and an indication of Malaysia's maturing democracy.
This article offers a broad analysis of a POOC (“Participatory Open Online Course”) offered throu... more This article offers a broad analysis of a POOC (“Participatory Open Online Course”) offered through the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2013. The large collaborative team of instructors, librarians, educational technologists, videographers, students, and project leaders reflects on the goals, aims, successes, and challenges of the experimental learning project. The graduate course, which sought to explore issues of participatory research, inequality and engaged uses of digital technology with and through the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem, set forth a unique model of connected learning that stands in contrast to the popular MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) model.
In recent decades, literary studies has experienced a global turn, often understood as a move bey... more In recent decades, literary studies has experienced a global turn, often understood as a move beyond national paradigms of analysis, which are deemed to be narrow and particularistic. Although wary of the tacit universalizing tendencies of global frames, scholars of race and postcoloniality have critically embraced the global by arguing for the need to theorize transnationalism from marginalized perspectives. However, casting the global and the national in oppositional terms ignores the fact that national racial ideologies both actively shape and are shaped by globally circulating ideas about race. An understudied site in postcolonial studies, Malaysia-formerly known as Malaya-is an exemplary case that unsettles this binary opposition. Informed by racialized distinctions between "native" and "migrants" inherited from colonial rule, the constitutionalized "special position" of "bumiputera" (literally sons of the earth or autochthonous group) citizens effectively renders race a defining aspect of national identity. This dissertation presents translation as an entry point into theorizing the relation between the national and the global in the production of the Malaysian racial imaginary. Drawing on theories of cultural translation, I begin with the premise that translation is a process of figuration, vii Cheng Khoo and Leah Souffrant read drafts of chapters and offered incisive feedback. Gaik's work paved the way for my foray into Malaysian indie cinema-in fact, she laid the groundwork for that field of study-and has generously shared her knowledge with me. Arnika created many opportunities for me to share my work with audiences in film studies and Southeast Asian studies; I am enriched by our illuminating conversations and hope there will be many more. Randy Barbara Kaplan, who has provided unceasing encouragement, invited me to share a portion of this work at my alma mater, SUNY Geneseo. For their advice and support in navigating the academic profession, I thank Ammiel Alcalay, Susan
Journal of Popular Film and Television, 2013
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or s... more This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) traces the biographical narrative of Chin Peng, the ... more The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) traces the biographical narrative of Chin Peng, the exiled Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya who led the armed uprising against the British during the Malayan Emergency. Going against the grain of official history, the film presents the communist-led uprising as contributing to the anti-colonial nationalist struggle. This essay argues that the film’s significance lies not merely in its retrieval of a marginalized perspective of national history. Subverting the conventions of the documentary genre, the film eschews interviews or archival footage of its eponymous subject, withholding him from sight to articulate the figure of the spectral communist. Moreover, the film stages scenes of everyday life as a site for conjuring the past in the present, a method of historical knowledge production that constitutes a translation of time. The figuring of a spectral historical subject, as signaled by a visual absence and the summoning...
From 2007 to 2012, Bersih, a coalition of non-governmental organisations calling for reform in th... more From 2007 to 2012, Bersih, a coalition of non-governmental organisations calling for reform in the Malaysian electoral system, held three rallies that gathered hundreds of thousands in Kuala Lumpur. These protests are largely deemed a people’s movement and a sign of transition from an authoritarian to a more democratic social political order. This paper examines the significance of the Bersih protests by considering how artists engaged with these events and the artworks they created in response. I focus on three figures, A. Samad Said, the National Literary Laureate and official spokesperson of Bersih, the artist Sharon Chin, and activist Fahmi Reza. The latter two respectively devised performance and visual pieces for the rallies that were subsequently featured in art institutions, the former at the 2013 Singapore Biennial and the latter in the Klang Valley. In their own ways, these artists invited fellow protestors to reflect on their relationship with one another as they participated in collective action, and on their relationship with authority figures. Their artistic interventions complicate the idea that Bersih reflects the rise of people’s power by implicitly questioning the hierarchical models that governed the protest’s terms of participation. Moreover, given that their artworks were situated both in the street and in cultural institutions, these artists incite conceptual questions on the relation between art and politics in analyses of political movements and contemporary art. Going beyond notions of art as political propaganda, or as reflecting the political ideologies of the times, these artists ask, how might the process of constituting collectivity be thought not just in political, but in aesthetic terms as well?
Postcolonial Text, 2014
...And the Rain My Drink (1956), a novel by Han Suyin, depicts the forced resettlement of rural C... more ...And the Rain My Drink (1956), a novel by Han Suyin, depicts the forced resettlement of rural Chinese in camps during the British counter-insurgency against the communist uprising. Drawing from the author's personal correspondence and unpublished drafts of a sequel to the novel, this essay reads the novel’s representation of the camp checkpoint as a conceptual metaphor for understanding the relation between fiction and history. Based on autobiographical experience, the novel presents its narrator, Dr. Han Suyin, as a translator of the Malayan polyglot world to her reader, effectively framing fiction as a translation of history. Just as the camp checkpoint is a site where the state’s biopolitical power is put on full display, the translation of fiction into history, I argue, can be understood as an act of passing through an epistemological checkpoint, one that illuminates the underlying racial gender politics that sustain the dominant national narrative of the cold war conflict.
Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies
The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) traces the biographical narrative of Chin Peng, the ... more The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir) traces the biographical narrative of Chin Peng, the exiled Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya who led the armed uprising against the British during the Malayan Emergency. Going against the grain of official history, the film presents the communist-led uprising as contributing to the anti-colonial nationalist struggle. This essay argues that the film’s significance lies not merely in its retrieval of a marginalized perspective of national history. Subverting the conventions of the documentary genre, the film eschews interviews or archival footage of its eponymous subject, withholding him from sight to articulate the figure of the spectral communist. Moreover, the film stages scenes of everyday life as a site for conjuring the past in the present, a method of historical knowledge production that constitutes a translation of time. The figuring of a spectral historical subject, as signaled by a visual absence and the summoning of the past in the present, unsettles the linear, chronological time of national history. In doing so, the film not only presents a critique of the national narrative’s ideological project of modernity, but conceives of history as a political act of redefining the historical present.
Book Reviews by Fiona Lee
Reviews in Cultural Theory
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media
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Dissertation by Fiona Lee
Papers by Fiona Lee
Book Reviews by Fiona Lee