Sacred Cows and Crashing Boars

Ethno-Religious Minorities and the Politics of Online Representation in Malaysia

Author: Susan Leong

Abstract:

Starting with the incident now known as the cow's head protest, this article traces and unpacks the events, techniques, and conditions surrounding the representation of ethno-religious minorities in Malaysia. The author suggests that the Malaysian Indians' struggle to correct the dominant reading of their community as an impoverished and humbled underclass is a disruption of the dominant cultural order in Malaysia. The struggle is also among the key events to have set in motion a set of dynamics—the visual turn—introduced by new media into the politics of ethno-communal representation in Malaysia. Believing that this situation requires urgent examination the author attempts to outline the problematics of the task.

Regions: Southeast Asia