Another History Of Malaysia? Expression From ‘Negara’ Sarawak

Abstract

National narratives are about the collective past as well as the future. It assumes the construction of a national identity and represents the central actors and peripheral actors orienting themselves towards the national story. However, the collective experience as part of constructing nation's history is occasionally challenged and subjugated by ethnicities, class, regions, and histories. Such forces are working on returning and reinterpreting the past. This paper presents the results of a focus group study exploring how the Sarawakian construct the history of Malaysia from a different point of view. Two focus groups (n=25) were conducted at Kuching and Miri, Sarawak. The results revealed that the most common constructs include violations of historical facts with regards to the representation of Malaysia's history. This sense of a 'Negara' Sarawak mapped out the constructivist notions of Orientalism by Edward Said in support of knowledge of the other global and regional developments over the last two decades. This configures upon the fabric of consciousness in the emergence of 'other' discourses in the history of Malaysia