Racialisation in Malaysia: Multiracialism, multiculturalism, and the cultural politics of the possible

This article focuses on racialisation as a signifying practice and cultural process that attributes difference in Malaysia. It attempts to think with and against the concept of racialisation with an aim to add to a clearer understanding of the cultural politics of ‘race’. It focuses on the hierarchies of power and marginalisation, visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion that are built into dominant discourses and modes of knowledge production about race, citizenship, and culture in Malaysia. This article aims to show how the political mobilisation of race as a remnant of colonial governmentality disciplines social processes through the notion of multiculturalism. For this reason, it sets up state-endorsed ‘multiracialism’ and a people-driven ‘multiculturalism’ as oppositional ways of thinking about race. It concludes by briefly identifying some key drivers for cultural transformation and speculating if these people-centred processes can offer a more imaginative racial horizon.

Meat, Mercy, Morality

This book uses the lens of humanitarian debates to understand the nature of British colonialism in India. It demonstrates that with emergence of new notions of public health in late 19th-century Bengal, contests over appropriate measures for controlling animals became part of wider debates surrounding environmental ethics, diet, sanitation, and a politics of race/class that reconfigured boundaries between the colonizer and the colonized. Centered around three major stories – animals as diseased, eaten, and overworked – it explores how the colonial project of animal protection mirrored an irony in that it exposed the disjunction between the claims of a benevolent colonial state and a powerful, not-too-benign reality where the state constantly sought to discipline its subjects – both human and nonhuman. It refreshes our understanding of environment, colonial science and British imperialism by arguing that colonial humanitarianism was not only an idiom of rule, but was also translated into Bengali dietetics, anxieties, vegetarianism and vigilantism which can be seen in India even today.

Guillermo del Toro’s Political Fairy Tales

While critical attention has largely focused on Del Toro’s overt fairy tale Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Del Toro’s Hollywood films similarly incorporate the mythic, moral and gothic qualities of classic fairy tales. His new fairy tales present vital contemporary lessons embedded in these archetypal journeys – and their audience’s memories. His free borrowings from fairy tales and popular culture deliberately connect the familiar to his uncanny worlds. This construction is most evident in his films Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) and The Shape of Water (2017). The contemporary politics of race, sexuality, gender and environmentalism are embedded within these original Hollywood fairy tales. This essay focuses on the intersecting political messages woven into Hellboy II: The Golden Army and The Shape of Water, messages amplified not obscured by their fairy tale delivery. Through rich textual references, intersections, and hidden subtexts, Del Toro creates new gothic fairy tales, with original protagonists, emerging from the margins. By resisting previous patriarchal and racial boundaries, these films challenge their audiences to embrace new paradigms.

'When you score you're English, when you miss you're Black': Euro 2020 and the racial politics of a penalty shoot-out

Through an analysis of the fortunes of the England national football team in the Euro 2020 tournament, this article offers a critical assessment of the politics of race, nation and belonging in sport. While racist reactions to three Black players who missed penalties in the final revealed the contingent belonging of Black footballers within racially exclusive definitions of Englishness, the article argues that it also provided an opportunity for an alternative politics of national belonging to be expressed. This takes at least two significant forms: firstly, the political confidence with which Black players and their white allies are speaking out publicly against racism; secondly, the support and solidarity shown to Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho resulting in an English solidarity that is expressed through an avowed rejection of racism. The article concludes that a shared solidarity in sport maybe found, not in the arrogance of national pride or success, but rather, in how players, managers and fans conduct themselves in moments of failure.

Parents, whiteness and sex education: A critical race critique of Parent sex education guides

‘It is difficult to talk to my children about sex’ – this anxiety has long been established in sex education literature, along with the beneficial role of improved parent–child communication for sexual health and relationship outcomes. However, the insights gained from this literature have been under-researched in migrant families, and has resulted in the ‘whitening’ of parent guides that provide ‘tips’ for parents. This article asks critical questions about the politics of race and representation that structure these documents. In the main, these questions rest on concerns about who these guides speak to. On the surface, the documents speak to everyone, through an inclusive terminology and phraseology that references ‘all parents’ and ‘our worries’. However, this paper asks: What does it do, and what is produced, to speak about parents in the general? How does the production of an assumed ‘singular/universal’ parent serve to ‘other’ the experiences a racially diverse parents, and render a broader range of experiences invisible? To explore this question, this article undertakes a critical discourse analysis of parent guides in Australia. It interrogates the normative frameworks that scaffold and structure the guides, and in the main argues that despite gestures toward inclusion, a very particular kind of parent lies at the heart of the documents. In addition, the article moves from deconstruction to think through what parent sex education guides might look like it they were better designed to account for difference.