Announcement
www.othermalaysia.org Lecture Series
Kicking off what we hope will be a semi-regular (well, sort of) series of public lectures, the team at www.othermalaysia.org invites you to a free public lecture by Dr. Farish A. Noor on the theme:
Revisiting the Keris: How We Betrayed Our Ancestors
To be held at 3.00 pm on 1st March (Saturday) at the Annexe, Central Market, Kuala Lumpur.
Deconstructing the Keris in the Context of Malaysia’s Essentialist Racialised Politics:
The keris today has been redefined as an exclusive (and sometimes violent) marker of ethnic – and specifically Malay – identity. Yet this simplification of the keris as a political symbol overlooks the fact that the keris emerged at a time when Asia was already globalised, and that the keris was in fact a product of cross-cultural borrowing and overlap. This lecture will attempt to relocate the keris in its proper cultural-historical context, calling for the de-racialisation of the keris and the reminder of our shared cultural heritage.
The talk is free and open to all.