November 1st 2024: Dr Rebecca Yeoh

Friday November 1st 2024 (Week 5 of term) 12.10-1:30pm, Room 2.50, John Percival Building 

CounterArchive: A Remembrance

Dr Rebecca Yeoh (Xiamen University Malaysia)

History should not be accepted as an absolute truth. It is often narrated with bias – the incident of 13 May 1969 and the first Malayan Emergency for example, always occupied a large part of Malaysian narratives despite being too sensitive to be probed. To ensure that the Malayan Emergency is understood alongside its nuances, a few steps have been taken to bring together voices that have decades, been repressed. Based on the notion of autonomous knowledge, the steps begin with a critique, deconstruction and finally reconstructing for original knowledge. Therefore, this sharing session will delve into sources of national history that has been dominating narratives of the first Malayan Emergency. Archival documents will also be utilized to deconstruct the dominating narratives. Aside from that, oral narratives and stories passed down from generation-to-generation will then serve to counter the truth claims as dominant narratives.