This piece was written about 5-6 years ago and I never managed to find a suitable home for it. Ultimately decided to post it here. It’s one that I enjoyed thinking and writing about and hope it does the same for readers, too.
Laying the Bruneian Body Bare in Norsiah Abd Gapar’s Pengabdian: Transcorporeality and MIB
It will be strange, at first, to think of the Bruneian national ethos of Melayu Islam Beraja (Malay Islamic Monarchy; MIB) as having anything in common with the concept of transcorporeality. The former reinforces a homogenous national and cultural identity that is frequently interpreted as a guard against cultural pollution through invading globalising forces (Ullah and Ho). The latter, in contrast, emerged in the new materialist turn sweeping across the social sciences and humanities (Frost and Coole) and emphasises the porosity of material bodies—particularly human bodies—and their intra-action with various microbes and bacteria that populate, and indeed sustain, the body (Alaimo). These respective ideologies also oppose each other in thrusts, in that MIB safeguards human concerns whereas transcorporeality dethrones the human in favour of an eco-conscious perspective and multispecies justice.
But to think of these two concepts as being contradictory to one another is to adhere to the false binary between materiality and discourse (Iovino and Oppermann). MIB is not merely discursive but is embodied and materialised through national, cultural, and religious practices that are essentially transcorporeal. Think about the importance of physical atmosphere to symbolic events such as Brunei’s National Day and Day of Independence. In the final chapter of Norsiah Abd Gapar’s Pengabdian, the event is described thus:
Pagi yang indah itu nampak begitu berseri kerana hari itu adalah hari yang bersejarah bagi negeri dan semua anak peribumi. Darussalam yang tercinta merayakan hari kebangsaannya yang ulung berikutan dengan kemerdekaan yang telah dicapai. Upacara perbarisan raksasa sempena saat yang bersejarah itu, nampak begitu beraneka warna dan gemilang sekali. Tanggal Februari 23 itu stadium besar di negara tampak sendat oleh tubuh-tubuh manusia dari pelbagai bangsa. Siti Nur merasakan suatu perasaan berkobar-kobar menyelubungi sanubarinya.
The glorious morning appeared to glow in what was a historic day for the nation and its people. Beloved Darussalam was celebrating its first national day following the achievement of its independence. The parade commemorating the momentous occasion looked sublimely colourful. On the 23rd of February, the national stadium was packed with bodies from various races. Siti Nur felt a certain emotion ablaze in her chest. (Pengabdian 171)[1]
Apart from the ritual of the parade that helps to embody the momentousness of the occasion, the historicity of the event is also made physical through the vivid sensory impressions of the atmosphere upon the body revealed in her description of the day as “berseri” (“glowing”), “beraneka warna” (“colourful”) and “gemilang” (“glorious”). Transcorporeality is also visualised in the image of the human bodies as “sendat” (“packed”) inside the larger stadium, revealing them as being literally and symbolically enjoined with one another and enmeshed within the broader environment. As Siti Nur, the protagonist of Pengabdian, witnesses this image remotely, it seems to be no coincidence that she, too, is affected physically, feeling the emotions “berkobar-kobar” (“ablaze”) within her body. Even mediated through the television set, Siti Nur is vividly sensorily and emotionally affected by the procession, which demonstrates the embodiment of an ideology moving through bodies and across a community.
What are we to make of MIB, a philosophy that intertwines traditionally patriarchal and anthropocentric systems, through the historically feminist and environmentalist lens of transcorporeality? For indeed this is what Pengabdian urges its readers to do in its affective, sensory, and tactile exploration of the nation through the various bodies that populate it. I suggest in this chapter that thinking MIB through transcorporeality is to undo easy categorical assumptions about the nation, national ethos, globalisation, and modernisation, which are often discussed in terms of discourse alone rather than with the attendant embodied and material experiences and practices. That the integrated mass of human bodies in the national procession is made up of “pelbagai bangsa” (“various races”) demonstrates the nation and national philosophy as both material and symbolic assemblages of varying intra-acting constituents rather than static and isolated monoliths.
Intra-action, according to feminist theorist Karen Barad—whose theory of agential realism greatly influenced new materialists and environmental scholars—“queers the familiar sense of causality (where one or more causal agents precede and produce an effect)” (qtd. in Kleinman 77). Barad argues that individuals “do not pre-exist as such but rather materialise in intra-action” (qtd. in Kleinman 77). The notion that individuals co-emerge rather than pre-exist unsettles ideas of the self as already whole and reframes assumptions of difference as threatening and malignant. The image of the intermingling human bodies in the national procession also emphasises the productive intra-action between the seven ethnicities (Belait, Bisaya, Brunei Malay, Dusun, Kedayan, Murut, and Tutong) that make up the Malay community in Brunei and underscores the “hybridity, multiplicity and fluidity of Malayness” (Ho 152) itself. Accordingly, a transcorporeal reading of Pengabdian also foregrounds the various material histories (environmental history, animal history, history of technology, more-than-human history, etc.) of the nation that go beyond the semiotic national discourse of MIB, which, in various attempts to define itself can tend towards obscuring its permeability and porosity.
In Bodily Natures, material feminist scholar Stacy Alaimo posits transcorporeality as a way to imagine the human as “always inter-meshed with the more-than-human world (which) underlines the extent to which the substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment’”. To study phenomena through transcorporeality is therefore to reveal and focus on “the interchanges and interconnections between various bodily natures.” It helps, then, to think of bodies as assemblages, which is a term borrowed from environmental scholars Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Heise. Haraway asserts that it is “assemblages of organic species and of abiotic actors [that] make history” (Anthropocene 159). Similarly, Heise points out that:
… what we normally understand as human societies and cultures (are), in reality, assemblages of many species, ranging from the microbes inhabiting our gastro-intestinal tracts and disease-carrying viruses to food plants and animals, pets, and those plants and animals that figure in ritual and religious practices (282).
Apart from history, culture itself should be thought of as including “nonhuman species as a constitutive element without which the meaning of ‘culture’ itself could not be established” (Heise 282). This is evident in the history of the Brunei Malay language, which contains numerous proverbs that reveal the intra-active relationship between Malay communities and their natural environment. To demonstrate, in his study of Malay proverbs, Yabit Alas points out that, “until recently, the great majority of Malays were rural people, and for the most part their proverbs reflect this country life” (143). An example he gives is the proverb, “seperti aur dengan tebing”, whereby its meaning, “to encourage cooperation between groups of people to achieve a goal that benefits all parties” (143), is inspired by the natural biological process reflected in the literal meaning of the proverb.[1] As a distinct element of Malay culture, this and many other proverbs expose the dynamic interactions that occur between human and nonhuman, culture and nature, matter and discourse.
In its attention to the physicality of, and movements across, bodies and senses, Pengabdian can also be seen as offering a reframing of relations between self and other beyond binary terms, especially through the relationship between Malay protagonist Siti Nur and her Chinese love interest, Sam. In passages describing the interaction between the two, there is repeated emphasis on the inadequacy of language and mere will in the face of physical and embodied attraction, which seems to go beyond words and thought. As Siti Nur sits next to Sam, for instance, “tanpa kerelaan hatinya, masa silam datang bertandang ke ruang ingatannya” (“without her consent, the past came roaring back in her mind”; Pengabdian 39). The separate yet interconnected existences of her consciousness and her heart is again emphasised when she goes on to acknowledge that, “Dia tidak pernah memaksa hatinya untuk menyintai dan mengasihi orang yang sedang duduk di sisinya kini” (“She had never once forced her heart to love and care for this person that was sitting next to her now”; Pengabdian 39). Once more, the image of individuals as assemblages emerges to point to the open-endedness and enmeshing of bodies and narratives. The spatiotemporal flow of narration, moving across the two bodies and across time to recall memories that then produce affective impact mimic the psycho-physiological responses that traverse matter and discourse, self and other.
This intra-action is underscored further when Siti Nur’s attraction towards Sam is described as a feeling that “telah datang bertunas dan bertumbuh di jiwanya dan bila ia sedar perasaan itu sudah berakar umbi di hatinya” (“sprouted and grew inside her and just as she began to take notice of it, the feeling had already taken root in her heart”; Pengabdian 39). The notion of bodies and feelings having an agency of their own—vividly imagined here growing vegetal roots, which aptly alludes to the symbiotic relationships among flora—and quite apart from Siti Nur’s awareness exemplifies the new materialist idea that “phenomena result from the intra-actions of material and discursive practices and agencies, which coemerge at once” (Iovino and Oppermann). By thinking through intra-action, relations between the self and other, and bodies and narratives can instead be reimagined as sites for change and transformation.
Certainly, the relationship between Siti Nur and Sam is portrayed as one that is dynamic and in continual flux as it precipitates the transformation of atheist Sam into Muslim Faisal. Their generative relationship continues even beyond Siti Nur’s death as Faisal helps realise her ambition of giving back to the community in the form of “Yayasan Siti Nur” (“The Siti Nur Foundation”). Notably, Sam’s decision to convert is largely inspired by the Malaysian students he encounters in London, whose integrity and adherence to their faith never waivers in “negeri yang penuh godaan itu” (“that country that is filled with all kinds of temptation”; Pengabdian 54). The catalysis of his conversion by non-Bruneian individuals, so-called “outsiders”, instantiates the intra-action of a continually growing Brunei itself. As Norsiah Abd Gapar narrates and publishes this story of Brunei’s becoming, she too is participating in the continuous interpretation and materialisation of the national ethos and national narrative. This dynamic becomes clearer in light of the fact that the author wrote and submitted Pengabdian for a nationwide competition held by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Brunei (the Language and Literature Bureau) to commemorate Brunei’s independence in 1983. The nation thus co-emerges with the varied bodies and narratives that populate and interact (or, rather, intra-act) with it.
The idea of development and transformation is obviously central to this momentous period in Brunei’s history. As Brunei sought to achieve independence, major projects were underway to modernise and technologise the nation’s infrastructure as well as grow the national economy and workforce even as it made concerted efforts to consolidate its national identity (Rinni 30-40). However, the notion of progress and development is often seen as contradictory to the reading of MIB as a reincarnation of, and attempt to hold on to, traditional, even ancient, values and practices (Low; Chin and Kathrina 101-114). Such a reading can be seen in Ann Black’s analysis of the position of Bruneian women in Brunei as being “reflect[ive of] the duality of national purpose” (Islamization 211). Black argues that “there is a tension inherent” in Brunei’s efforts to position itself as a leading political and economic state in Asia while also “return[ing] to allegedly ‘traditional’ Malay customs and practices, [reasserting] Islam as a religious and legal priority, and [endorsing] an undemocratic political regime” (Islamization 212). Hence, Bruneian women are seen as both socially, politically, and economically liberated and “disenfranchised,” being subject to “restrictive” patriarchal laws of Islam (Islamization 212).
But to give such a reading is to align with limited, essentialist and purely discursive understandings of Islam and modernisation. Under a new materialist lens, where all matter is “storied matter” (Iovino and Oppermann), embodied and materialised Islamic values tell a more nuanced story that go beyond dichotomous thinking. In Pengabdian, Siti Nur herself displays embodied contradictions to her own complicated and shifting understanding of women’s roles in Islam. In her explanation to her younger sister, Hannah, she points out the female ability to “mengandung nyawa dalam rahim kita. Selama sembilan bulan kita kaum perempuan menghadapi tekanan perasaaan” (“bear another living being in our womb. For nine months, we women face emotional upheaval”), at the same time that they can “berjaya merampas kerjaya-kerjaya yang dulunya hanyalah dimonopoli oleh lelaki” (“be successful in careers that had previously been monopolised by men”; Pengabdian 74). Her depiction is further nuanced by adding that, “Kita dengan sifat-sifat yang lemah lembut dan tenaga fizikal yang kurang dari kaum lelaki adalah diamanahkan untuk menjadi seorang suri rumah tangga, menjaga kepentingan suami dan anak-anak” (“We, with our gentle nature and physically weaker dispositions than men, have been entrusted to become homemakers, to care for our husbands and children”; Pengabdian 74). In other words, the female figure, even within the Malay culture and Islamic view, is understood to be fluid, at times possessing strength greater than men (in childbirth, maternally, and professionally) and at others subservient to the needs of their family. Notably, when Siti Nur herself becomes a wife, she never does manage to fulfil these roles that she outlines and is still valorised rather than condemned. Through her sickness and eventual death, she demonstrates the open-endedness of the ideologies that she herself subscribes to, calling attention to the inadequacy of merely paying attention to discourse rather than materialised actions and effects.
To think of the societal expectations of women’s duties to their families as subservient or oppressive is perhaps to do Bruneian society and MIB little justice. The act of caring for and attending to the needs of others is also the foundation of a transcorporeal and eco-conscious understanding of multispecies co-existence—the antidote to the neoliberal capitalist and extractive behaviour that have led to the environmental injustices and crises all over the world. While Siti Nur’s explanation sees duty of care as a gendered responsibility, Pengabdian as a whole reflects such responsibility as distributed equitably across all levels of society, including the monarch. In her letter to her uncle Khalid, who was one of the supporters of the 1962 Brunei Revolt, Siti Nur emphasises the peace and prosperity in the nation afforded by the monarchic government that has subsidised or made free most of its citizens’ basic needs including “pelajaran dan perubatan” (“education and healthcare”; Pengabdian 112). She questions other “corak pemerintahan” (“systems of government”), particularly one “berpandukan kemenangan undi” (“democratic systems of government”) that would be susceptible to corruption and bribery: “Sekiranya ‘undi’ itu boleh dibeli dengan wang dan janji-janji manis, bagaimanakah kita akan mewujudkan suatu pemerintahan yang jujur, bersih dan berkebolehan?” (“If people’s votes can be bought with money and bribery, how would we ever produce a system of governance that is honest, clean, and capable?”; Pengabdian 112)
Arguably, Siti Nur’s justification can be seen as a product of nationalist propaganda. The subsidies and benefits provided by the Bruneian government has been criticised as a way to “satisfy and subdue its people, who appear willing to trade rights and freedoms, including religious freedom, in exchange for personal material prosperity and communitarian affluence” (“Whither Pluralism”). But such a view is premised on the idea that there are no rights and freedoms to be had—or perhaps none worth having—in personal material prosperity, communitarian affluence and having basic medical, education, and security needs fulfilled by the monarchic government. This particular criticism, which presumably favours more democratic forms of government, is also largely anthropocentric. It disregards environmental, land, animal, and more-than-humans’ needs and rights in the name of safeguarding human freedoms, as well as being ableist in overlooking the ailing and disabled bodies that also populate Pengabdian, who are unable to contribute significantly to the nation’s economic and political development. Siti Nur alludes to this human bias in her letter to her uncle, when she argues that if Brunei had been subsumed under an external democratic regime, the same people would have “membolot kekayaan bumi kita ini” (“exploited our natural resources for themselves”; Norsiah 112). At this point in our environmental and climate crisis, it is undeniable that Siti Nur’s hypothesis has been proven true. One need only look at the devastatingly stark contrast between Brunei’s largely intact rainforest and its neighbouring countries’ plundering of their own land (Bryan et al.).
Idealisation of social and political liberation, globalisation, and modernisation is often underwritten by dichotomous thinking that paints tradition and religion as “backward”, signified, for instance, by Black’s use of the term “return” to Malay traditions and Islamic values (Islamization 212). This dichotomy is also echoed in studies that see local culture and MIB as “the nation’s ‘spiritual domain’” and posit this against “the ‘material domain’ pursued through today’s endeavours of globalisation” (Ullah and Ho 14). Within many Bruneians’ own narratives as well it has been found that, “difference is represented as foreign, deviant, or non-conformist, and viewed as a threat to the security and cohesion of MIB boundaries both within and without” (Chin and Kathrina 103). In order to move beyond such zero-sum logic, Pengabdian provides a spectrum of individual experiences of the nation. Emphasising the heterogeneity of narratives within the nation reframes what it means to be socially inclusive as it calls for redistribution of rights and care across society. Importantly, these narratives are situated and localised rather than all-encompassing and absolute, allowing for the acknowledgement of the instability and fluidity of human-made values and ideologies.
These narratives are, to borrow Haraway’s words, ones with “specific positioning, multiple mediation, [and] partial perspective,” which necessitates relations that also acknowledge “the permanent condition of our fragility, morality, and finitude” (Simians). This recalls the opening of the novel, where Siti Nur performs a medical check-up for a young patient with Down’s Syndrome. His adoptive mother asks Siti Nur about his slow pace of development, to which Siti Nur decides not to disclose (yet) that he might never be able to “dapat hidup normal seperti kanak-kanak lain” (“can lead a normal life like other children”; Pengabdian 4). Siti Nur’s decision reveals her acknowledgement of the gulf between her privileged standing and her patient and his mother’s disadvantaged positions. Siti Nur asks herself, “Bagaimanakah dia hendak menyatakan kepada perempuan ini bahawa anak angkatnya ini menghidap kecacatan otak yang tidak akan sembuh sampai bila-bila?” (“How could she tell this woman that her adopted son has a genetic disorder that can never be cured?”; Pengabdian 4) Any explanation she may give hastily will inevitably result in one that is framed by the presumptions and beliefs of an able-bodied woman with no children of her own to care for. Instead, she admits to her patient’s mother, “Buat masa ini belum boleh saya pastikan mak cik” “For now, I can’t be too sure”; Pengabdian 4) thus acknowledging her partial perspective.
That Pengabdian ends with Siti Nur’s death is a poignant yet necessary reminder of the fragility of the human condition that Haraway raises. Readers are made aware that this story is told from a particularly human and therefore mortal perspective—a being always reliant on and enmeshed within the environment and that is only capable of telling situated, mediated, and partial narratives. Siti Nur’s death “relocates the human in a larger material-semiotic ‘collective’” (Iovino and Oppermann) proposed by material ecocritics and applicable to an independent and MIB-guided Brunei. This collective is visualised in the novel’s ending, where Siti Nur’s grave is described as surrounded by “beberapa puput bunga mawar merah yang masih segar menghiasi tanah pusara itu” (“A bunch of fresh red roses still surrounded the grave”; Pengabdian 175) signifying the natural cycle of returning to and reinvigorating the soil through the body’s decomposition. Here, again, change is seen to be generative rather than destructive. The human body’s material susceptibility and vulnerability to natural forces can also be seen semiotically within Islam as its subjection to its creator’s will. As Siti Nur reminds Hannah: “Ingatlah, mata yang cantik itu boleh jadi buta. Bibir yang indah itu boleh jadi sumbing dan tangan yang cantik itu boleh jadi puntung kalau Tuhan menghendaki” (“Remember, eyes that are beautiful can become blind. Lips that are beautiful can become crooked and hands that are beautiful can become handicapped if God wills”; Pengabdian 73).
Under this reading, the various ailing and disabled characters are seen as constitutive, rather than marginal, figures in the larger collective of Brunei. Like the adopted Udin and Azmil, they redefine what it means to be a family and a community and demand that social structures—more importantly, the people within them—be more inclusive by recognising their entangled nature with those different from them as signalled by the differently abled characters in the text. Their existence forces the characters to confront the fragility of being human—the susceptibility of the human body to disorders, diseases, and death—which in turn effects forms of social responsibility as encoded within MIB.
The importance of inclusivity is made most explicit in the debate between Siti Nur and Dr. Jones regarding the best approach to treat the former’s patient, Junaidah, who is suffering from a hereditary blood disorder, Thalassaemia Beta. Dr. Jones is adamant that they stop treatment for fear of Junaidah bearing children in the future who might also contract the disorder. Sam, who at first agrees with Dr. Jones reasons that, “negara kita perlu masyarakat yang sihat fizik dan mentalnya” (“our country needs its people to be physically and mentally healthy”), and to spend on treatments for patients like Junaidah would “tentu sekali merosotkan ekonomi” (“definitely burden the economy”). Siti Nur rebuts his point by appealing to his sense of humanity, asking, “Apakah wang ringgit itu lebih bernilah dari nyawa seorang manusia? […] Atau mungkin orang-orang seperti you berpendapat bahawa dunia ini hanya untuk orang yang normal saja” (“Is money more valuable than the life of a human being? […] Or do people like you think that only able-bodied people are fit to be in this world?”; Pengabdian 20).
Siti Nur’s belief in the equal importance of her patients is not only demonstrative of a transcorporeal understanding of human existence that sees them beyond a purely economic vantage point but is also in line with the values of MIB that effects various forms of social responsibility. To treat the differently abled characters as kin—Siti Nur asks Sam to imagine what he would do if Junaidah was his own daughter—is not only to align with MIB values of community, but to acknowledge and be attentive to “the materiality of the body as … an active, sometime recalcitrant, force” (Alaimo and Hekman 4). Siti Nur’s recognition of human kinship between herself and Junaidah also indicates her acknowledgment of the fragility of the human body as evidenced by her own body’s deterioration when she finally succumbs to ovarian cancer.
However, the differently abled characters should not only be seen as mere conduits through which others may fulfil their duties of care as indicated within the MIB philosophy. As part and evidence of the wide spectrum of human abilities, they indicate the multitude of bodily experiences and ways of knowing the world. To acknowledge this variety is to also uncover the various material and semiotic ways in which MIB can be construed, experienced, and lived by. Norsiah Abd Gapar appears to probe this matter of a fluid and inclusive national philosophy as she dedicates a lengthy and detailed passage to describing how Thalassaemia Beta can come to be. By focusing on the material human body, she appears to “display a consciousness of the significance of gaining knowledge through the feeling and sensuous aspects of the flesh,” (Kerstin Schaub 10) or in the case of Pengabdian, the biological processes that sustain the human body. In other words, MIB can be seen as a narrative that is upheld by various other (biological, environmental, land, etc.) narratives, just as the nation is upheld by various forms of bodies. The care that Siti Nur extends towards her patient, who may perhaps be seen as symbolic of difference, is recognition of the other as self, the body as agentic, and matter as storied matter, which as I have tried to demonstrate in this study are all in tandem with the MIB philosophy.
Reading Pengabdian through the new materialist lens of transcorporeality foregrounds the “unruly edges” that anthropologist Anna Tsing suggests of bodies and narratives (141-154). It draws attention to the ways in which the body and its material surroundings behave, which do not necessarily align with our expectations and ideologies. Rather, they urge us to read beyond them and to pay attention to the dynamic exchanges and processes that take place at the seams and edges of both matter and narrative. Reading matter is thus not to invalidate beliefs and ideologies held, but to point to their humanness, i.e., partiality, fallibility, and open-endedness. To try and live strictly by them, as perhaps Siti Nur herself does, is, in Kathrina Mohd Daud’s words, “an impossible ideal” (53).
Works Cited
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Alaimo, Stacy, and Susan Hekman. “Introduction: Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory.” Material Feminisms, edited by Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, Indiana University Press, 2008, pp. 1-19.
Alas, Yabit. “Environmental Awareness Education through Proverbs in Brunei Darussalam.” Sosio Humanika: Jurnal Pendidikan Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan, vol. 10, no. 2, 2017, pp. 139-150.
Black, Ann. “Brunei Darussalam: Whither Pluralism in the ‘Abode of Peace’?” The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2021/09/brunei-darussalam-whither-pluralism-in-the-abode-of-peace/
———. “Islamization, Modernity, and The Re-positioning of Women in Brunei.” Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions, and Women’s Rights in The Asia-Pacific Region, edited by Amanda Whiting and Carolyn Evans, Nijhof: Brill, 2006, pp. 211-239.
Bryan, Jane E., et al. “Extreme Differences in Forest Degradation in Borneo: Comparing Practices in Sarawak, Sabah, and Brunei.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 7, 2013. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0069679
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Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 159-165.
———. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge, 1991.
Heise, Ursula K. “Multispecies Futures and The Study of Culture.” Futures of The Study of Culture, edited by Doris Bachmann-Medick, Jens Kugele, and Ansgar Nünning, De Gruyter, 2020, pp. 274-287. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110669398-017
Ho, Hannah. “Women Doing Malayness in Brunei Darussalam.” Southeast Asian Review of English, vol. 56, no. 2, 2019, pp. 147-165.
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Kathrina Mohd Daud. “Articulating Female Citizenship in Norsiah Gapar’s Pengabdian.” The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back, edited by Grace V.S. Chin and Kathrina Mohd Daud, Singapore: Springer, 2018, pp. 41-54.
Kerstin Schaub, Vorgelegt. As Written In The Flesh: The Human Body as Medium of Cultural Identity and Memory in Fiction from New Zealand. Doctoral dissertation, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, 2013. https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/opus4-wuerzburg/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/6679/file/Schaub_Dissertation.pdf
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Rinni Haji Amran. “Technologizing Islam, Islamifying Technology: The Use of Modern Technologies in Brunei’s First Film, Gema Dari Menara (1968).” Southeast Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal, vol. 20, no. 2, 2020, pp. 30-40.
Tsing, Anna. “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species.” Environmental Humanities,vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 141-154.
Ullah, Ahsan, and Hannah Ho. “Globalisation and Cultures in Southeast Asia: Demise, Fragmentation, Transformation.” Global Society, vol. 35, no. 2, 2020, pp. 191-206.
[1] The root of this proverb is the natural process by which the “woven root system of bamboo acts as a cohesive for colloidal particles, making the plant a very important species as soil protector near rivers.”
[1] All quotations and translations of Pengabdian are done by Rinni Haji Amran unless otherwise stated.
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