Continuing an earlier thought-train inspired by Geraldine Muhlmann, she writes that journalism's role in a democracy is to do more than just problematise homogeneity, though this is important. It needs to help the 'we' that is formed by journalism (the nation, or, in a Malaysian context, the race) become 'decentred', which I read as being analagous to 'unbalanced', a place where we teeter on the edge of unreason, fearing that the abyss is gazing back at us. She illustrates this being successfully achieved through Hatzfeld's work on the Rwandan genocide. I've not read these works, but she quotes two books, one that documents the voices of the survivors, one of the perpetrators.
I was reminded of a disturbing account written a view years back of 13 May 1969. The reporter had interviewed older Malay men who reminisced about doing what had to be done, and lamenting that there were no youths today who would be able to defend the race, as they had done in the past. And in trying (unsuccessfully) to track down that post, I came across the story of a man who had left others behind to die in a cinema, knowing that his race wasn't being targeted.
As a Malaysian, these are the areas of darkness that I don't know how to look at. Knowing that this uncle or that uncle in my past or my present were almost certainly in that moment, on that precipice. And that they fell, arbitrarily, on one side or another. It makes our capital city something of a little miracle, that we manage to go on, living side by side, day by day.
But as citizens we need to probe this everyday miracle, to prod and poke at it, because miracles are the substance of myth and fairytale. We need something more substantial on which to base our nation.
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