Masculinities and the Brunei Chinese “Problem”: The Ambivalence of Race, Gender, and Class in Norsiah Haji Abd Gapar’s Pengabdian

Abstract

Using Connell’s theory of masculinities in relation to the strategies of stereotyping and idealising, this article examines how the representations of Chinese masculinities in the Bruneian Malay novel Pengabdian (Submission, 1987) engage with the intersections of race, gender, and class that undergird social identities and interethnic relations in Brunei Darussalam. The identity and position of the Chinese are problematic in Brunei, where the primary identity of the Malays as “authentic” natives and citizens is upheld by the state ideology of Melayu Islam Beraja (Malay Islamic Monarchy; henceforth MIB). The Chinese, however, are positioned as racialised Other through citizenship controls, even as their contributions to social and economic development are recognised by the state. Brunei’s ambivalent treatment of the Chinese Other is reflected in Pengabdian, which employs the strategies of stereotyping and idealising to produce a MIB-compliant narrative in which the dangers posed by difference, specifically represented by Chinese masculinity, are symbolically erased while Malay masculinity is defended as the hegemonic ideal through the trope of conversion.