Don: Better to have cultural dialogue without guarantees

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KUALA LUMPUR: International migration and globalisation have turned most Western nations into hybrid states where the idea of a “national culture” is hard to conceive.

And debates about integration, social cohesion and national values reflect anxieties over this issue.

Prof Ien Ang from the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, will address the challenges posed by this “multicultural question” during a public lecture at University Malaya on Monday, Sept 28, at 5pm.

She suggests that we need a cosmopolitan approach without resorting to the myth of perfect national unity.

Unity approach: Prof Ang will deliver the lecture at Universiti Malaya next Monday.

“Instead, we need to adopt the practice of intercultural dialogue without guarantees,” says Prof Ang.

Although the lecture will focus on the West, there are similarities in the context of Malaysia or South-east Asia in general.

Born in Indonesia of Chinese parentage, Prof Ang was educated in the Netherlands and has lived in Australia since 1991.

She has written numerous books on popular culture and multiculturalism in the globalised world, including Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991) and On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (2001).

The lecture, co-hosted by UM and the Asian Center for Media Studies, is free to the public. Kindly register outside Lecture Theatre 3, Economics Faculty, by 4.45pm.