Stranger Next Door Lecture Series (Grilling Borders Satellite Program)
Stranger Next Door Lecture Series in the summer of 2024 starts from reflections on Grilling Borders. TheCube invites 3 groups of researchers, writers, and artists from Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan to deliver 3 lectures from the perspectives of literature, visuals, history, society, and politics. A multi-dimensional discussion on ethnic and national borders will take place at TheCube on 3 consecutive Saturday from 29th June. The word “Stranger” in the original Greek text refers to “the people outside the fence, that is, the alien people.” Stranger Next Door Lecture Series originated from some thoughts on Taiwan’s southward policy. The exchanges and transactions carried out under the policy are like the construction of relationships with strangers. Through the unconsciousness or subconsciousness hidden under the word “stranger (person)”, Stranger Next Door Lecture Series hopes to loosen the invisible borders or boundaries and develop an action to understand the gaps in each other’s historical, social, political, and cultural networks.
01: May 13: The body, Memory, Gender and Beyond
Speaker: Show Ying Xin (Lecturer , School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University)
Discussant: Ku Yu-Ling (Associate Professor, School of Humanities, Taipei National University of the Arts)
This episode is taken from the Stranger Next Door lecture series held at TheCube Project Space on June 29th as part of the Grilling Borders satellite program. Featuring a presentation by Show Ying Xin, lecturer at the School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University, Show discussed female narratives and memories of the “May 13 Incident” in Malaysia. Also joining the discussion was Ku Yu-Ling, who shared insights from Taiwan’s own experiences, exploring aspects of memory politics, change, and interpretation.
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The numbers “513” have long become a symbol in Malaysian history. Racial conflict, violence, the official death toll of 196, declassified files, the New Economic Policy, national unity, the plights of the Chinese community… It seems that there is an invisible watershed that separates Malaysia before and after May 13, 1969, dividing the past from the future. What was once is no longer there, and what follows is fraught with unspeakable difficulties. Half a century later, while the “truth” of May 13 remains elusive, it has been a subject of concern for writers and artists, continuously reimagined in various forms. This talk focuses on the recurring themes of bodies and memories in narratives about May 13, especially highlighting the female characters penned by women writers. How are their memories of May 13 different? Can we have different memories of May 13? What stories and emotions do their bodies convey that are distinct from male/national memories of May 13?
02: The Malay’s Trauma Memory of the Malayan Communist Party
Speaker: Richard Yeoh (Researcher, Social, Economic and Democracy Advancement Project)
This episode is taken from the Stranger Next Door lecture series held at TheCube Project Space on July 6th as part of the Grilling Borders satellite program. The session featured a presentation by Richard Yeoh, a research fellow at SEDAP, a Malaysian youth think tank based in Taiwan. Yeoh discussed the period from World War II to the Cold War, centered on the Malayan Communist Party, and expanded on the traumatic memories of the Malay community stemming from this historical context.
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The Malayan Communist Party played a pivotal role during various stages in Malaysia’s history, including World War II, the post-war British colonial period, the independence of Malaya in 1957, and the founding of Malaysia in 1963. The government of Malaysia has continuously reconstructed and disseminated anti-communist narratives according to historical contexts and political needs, indirectly creating incommensurability among different ethnic and memory groups. Facing up to each other’s tragic experiences and the complex structure behind traumatic memory and national history would be a possible path to reconciliation and resolving the dichotomy between different memory paradigms and historiography of nationalism in Malaysia.