Night School

This week we reflect alongside members of the team behind Making Space: We Are Where We Aren't, an ongoing exhibition on the dynamics of space. Among other things we question the issues inherent to the public / private divide and the challenges of presenting art in contemporary Kuala Lumpur. With space so essential to who we are, how do we think it the better to understand ourselves as citizens and individuals. Featuring curator Ong Jo-Lene, artist Sharon Chin and art critic Johan Zolhaidi.

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Martin Heidegger's 1927 opus "Being and Time" is an incomplete work but it caused waves in Western philosophy upon its release. Its legacy remains polarised today, given Heidegger's infamous affiliation with the Nazi Party. His indictment against the alienating forces of modern life, however, remains relevant as ever. This week, Fuad and Sharaad unpacks its call for authenticity to understand the values of its insights for our time.

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“I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?” That was one of the big names in anthropology, Margaret Mead, whose work on identity and culture made waves when it was first published. In this episode we talk to a Malaysian, Mohan Ambikaipaker about his journey into anthropology.

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The spectacle of protests across the United States of America following the unarmed shooting by police of a young African-American boy, reminded the world of the persistence of the racial dimension of social and political realities even in countries that claim to be democratic. In this episode we discuss Critical Race Theory and how it might be usefully applied to understanding the British and American society. We speak to a Malaysian-born, American-trained anthropologist whose field work was based in the metropolis of London.

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The Australian National University’s online journal, New Mandala, describes her volume, "Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow" as an extensive study into an area not often explored. Weiss jokes that this study is the continuation of her work on civil society and other marginal social forces in Malaysia society and history. In this episode we explore the concepts central to this largely historical work including the ecology of the campus, the dual social nature of students and the politics of intellectual containment.

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Poised between self-congratulations and self-criticism, our hosts look back at a year of Night School episodes. We walked through the genetics, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, social theory and even religion (we tip-toed). Together with independent art curator, Jolene, we asked ourselves how better can we make the show for 2015.

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Earlier this month, Ebrahim Moosa, one of the world's foremost South African intellectuals visited Malaysia to give a series of talks. BFM Night School was fortunate to host him for an in depth one on one interview, where we discuss, among other things, his intellectual journey, activist worldview and helping us contextualise contemporary issues.

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How do historians see the world? And how has history been used by politicians and others in shaping the world around? Peter Carey is the Adjunct Professor at Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia and Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford. His books include “The Power of Prophecy; Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855”, “East Timor: Third World Colonialism and the Struggle for National Identity” and “From Burma to Myanmar: Military Rule and the Struggle for Democracy”.

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Asia as Method by Chen Kuan-Hsing is changing the way in which we view Asia. It has become an indispensable resource in cultural studies and social theory, as it calls for an understanding of Asia beyond the cultural confines of Eurocentric lenses and assumptions to an appreciation of the region's complexities and multiplicity. A new discourse of Asia, that is grounded in a full grasp of its material challenges is beginning. We speak to Adelle Lim and Douglas Shang, postgraduate students at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus for an understanding of this key texts and its theoretical implications.

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Fresh from the George Town Literary Festival – the fourth in the series – and while waiting for their flight their respective homes in the Klang Valley, our hosts look back at ideas and notions embedded in the many conversations they had at the annual gab-fest. From the absence of Kassim Ahmad, and Sudhir Vadaketh’s Malayans to Zan Azlee’s suburbanites in Afghanistan and aspiring writers, we rummage about for GTLF gems.

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