The Sinophone as an Uneven Experience of Time and Place: Translocal Media Consumption in Chinese-Speaking Malaysia

Based on interviews and ethnographic engagement with Malaysian consumers of post-1990s Chinese-language popular media products (television, film, and music), this article argues that overseas Chinese identity formation may be as much a translocal as a transnational phenomenon. Specifically, it demon...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Positions : Asia Critique 2024-11, Vol.32 (4), p.943-964
Main Author: Yu, Ting-Fai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asian History
Asian Studies
Boundaries
Consumers
Consumption
Critical Theory
History
Identity formation
Language shift
Mass media
Television
Theory and Philosophy
Transnationalism
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Based on interviews and ethnographic engagement with Malaysian consumers of post-1990s Chinese-language popular media products (television, film, and music), this article argues that overseas Chinese identity formation may be as much a translocal as a transnational phenomenon. Specifically, it demonstrates how Chinese-speaking Malaysia has been unevenly affected by Sinophone media flows across generations and regions, resulting in divergent cultural practices and aspirations, and it highlights intraethnic complexities that are determined by both temporal and spatial contexts. First, it examines Chinese Malaysians’ consumption of Chinese-language media as an intergenerational experience, vis-à-vis the general shift from the popularity of Hong Kong media before 2000, toward media from the People’s Republic of China in the present. Second, by highlighting the unique position of Johor, the Malaysian state bordering Singapore, in the Sinophone media circuit, the article demonstrates how in some cases geographic proximities may be more significant than national boundaries or policies in regulating cultural traffic. Finally, in the age of global China, this article highlights how interviewees’ present consumption of non-PRC Chinese-language media exemplifies a Sinophone logic of cultural and affective mobilities that resists the homogenization of PRC media in Southeast Asia. As an attempt to engage theorizations of translocality and transnationality in productive tension with each other, the article concludes by arguing for the significance of Malaysia in highlighting Sinophone cultures as uneven experiences of time and space.
ISSN:1067-9847
1527-8271
DOI:10.1215/10679847-11306868