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100 _a Saxena, Vandana and Saigaran, Nithiya Guna
_956839
245 _aSongs of Tamil plantation women of Malaya: Contesting memories and histories
260 _aModern Asian Studies
300 _a59(1), Jan, 2025: p.265-288
520 _aThis article is an outcome of a search for the Tamil plantation woman in Malaysia and her voice—her stories and memories, in her own words. Through the plantation songs of Tamil workers in Malaysia, first collated and published in the 1980s, we explore the experiences and memories of these women, singing about their lives and work in the Malayan plantations. As memory-work, these songs constitute an oral history that provides an uneasy counter to hegemonic discourses like that of the colonial planters who employed the women, or the nationalist historiography of India and Malaysia where they are sidelined and reduced to figures of abject victimhood in the clutches of colonial capitalism, or the post-colonial discourse where their memories and experiences constitute a shameful past that obstructs optimism for the future. Tamil plantation songs call for a comparative approach to history and memory—between the position of the woman and that of the man, or the labourer and the supervisor/planter, as well as more problematic and shifting positionalities like seducer and the seduced, or the victim and the perpetrator.- Reproduced https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/abs/songs-of-tamil-plantation-women-of-malaya-contesting-memories-and-histories/4011258C2D27E3968ACD75EBEC9C1A0D
650 _aTamil plantation women, Malaysian plantation, Malaysian Indians, Plantation songs, Counter memory.
_956840
773 _aModern Asian Studies
942 _cAR