Youthful Voices

This chapter introduces several youthful, up-and-coming intellectuals, some counter-cultural, others more mainstream, still others embodying a mix of traditional and modernist approaches. Some posed challenges to conventional preferences in literature, art, and lifestyle, while others shared the preferences of mainstream Malaysians and their own intellectual elders. This chapter portrays Mat Nor, who questioned the prevailing ethos of art and literature for development, but whose renown negated the occasional head-scratching over his views and lifestyle; Aishah, prolific but not anti-Establishment; Taib, experimental in his work but traditional in many other respects; and creator, critic, and educator Ghazali, a prototype of the modern Malaysian intellectual. Chapter 7 concludes by noting that all of these younger intellectuals, whatever their outlook, had contact and interaction with their older counterparts. This is the way Malaysian intellectuals passed the torch from incumbents to the next wave.