ABSTRACT
The Malayan peninsula looms large in the works of Ng Kim-chew 黃錦樹, a central figure in the Sinophone writings that have emerged on the international literary scene from Southeast Asia over the last few decades. In Ng's fiction, the peninsula and its surrounding islands, the tropical backdrops, the ecological flora and fauna and the peoples that constitute the Malaysian nation, all inhabit pivotal positions and serve to bring Ng's Malayan tropics to life. But what exactly is the “sense of place” (境) his works engender? When we consider the multiple overlaying of ecocolonial memories and histories, the compound physical and mental landscapes of different peoples, colonial regimes, religious affiliations and shifting cultural identities, just how do Ng's fictional pieces “dwell” in these tropics? How does his fiction participate in the literary emplotment (情) of a tropical landscape that figures the environmental, social, colonial and postcolonial milieux of a Malaysian nation-state in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? By examining the short story “Allah's Will” (1996), this chapter will consider the literariness of ecocolonial/postcolonial discourses operative in Ng's narratives and how they emplot a sense of ecological “dwelling” in the tropics. By employing an ecosophical framework that reflects upon the twin concepts of qing and jing, the essay aims to site not only the placelessness of Ng's fiction, but also the ecological possibilities of thinking Malaysia's tropical environment otherwise.
