[TALK] The Life of Syed Hussein Alatas and Writing about Malaysia

[TALK] One Man, Many Stories: The Life of Syed Hussein Alatas and Writing about Malaysia

Date & time: 20 September 2024, 8.00pm
Venue: Penang Institute conference hall.
Speaker: Masturah Alatas
Moderator: Gareth Richards

Co-organiser: Gerakbudaya

Bios
The speaker:
Masturah Alatas is the author of the first biography of Syed Hussein Alatas, The Life in the Writing (Gerakbudaya 2024). She is also the author of the fable, The Girl Who Made It Snow in Singapore (Ethos Books 2008), and is one of several writers around the world (along with Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh and Susan Abulhawa) in the anthology Will the Flower Slip through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Capitalist Climate Change (LeftWord Books 2017). Masturah teaches English at the University of Macerata, Italy, where she has been living since 1992. She has also written about Emilio Salgari, the nineteenth-century Italian adventure novelist who invented the Malay hero, Sandokan. In 2021 Masturah won Singapore Unbound’s first flash fiction prize.

The moderator:
Gareth Richards is a writer, editor and bookseller. His most recent book (as co-editor) is Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia: Critical Perspectives (Springer 2021).

Abstract of talk:
In 1968 the Malaysian sociologist, Syed Hussein Alatas (1928–2007), made a prophetic recommendation at a youth conference in Penang. He suggested that a Malaysian research committee on communal relations be established, because without the proper research into the social problems affecting Malaysians, they would be doomed in time to come. The 13 May 1969 racial riots happened barely a year later. At the time, Alatas was also a co-founder and chairman of Gerakan, a multiethnic political party in the opposition that went on to defeat the ruling Alliance party in the state of Penang in the general election of 10 May 1969. Alatas had also begun research into what was to become his most internationally known work, The Myth of the Lazy Native (Frank Cass 1977, Gerakbudaya 2022). This talk focuses not only on how Alatas’s own captive mind theory and ideals of excellence formed the bedrock of his body of scholarship but also how they can be a lens through which to read the state of Malaysian research and letters today. Finally, what are the untold stories about Alatas’s life that can lead to more new writing about Malaysia?

Host or Publisher Penang Institute & Dr. Wu Lien-Teh Society