Once again, I have to start another column with a health warning: Those who are not too keen on discourse analysis should stay away from the following article.

This month marks the 20th anniversary of Dr Mahathir Mohamad (1) coming to power. After 20 years as head of state, he happens to be one of the longest-serving leaders in the world.

His ascendancy to the top of the political pyramid is of course something that most of us are familiar with by now. Most of us are also aware of the subtle and not-too-subtle plots and subplots that have been at work in this convoluted and at times confusing story of politics.

Those who are more interested in the life and work of the man should turn to Khoo Boo Teik's excellent study of the man and his ideas, entitled ' Paradoxes of Mahathirism ', which, in this author's view, happens to be the best book on the subject available.(2)

The great merit of Teik's excellent study is the fact that he differentiates between Mahathir the Man and Mahathirism as an ideology and belief-system. This is something that most of us have simply ignored or failed to remind ourselves with the passing of time.

No doubt this tendency has been made worse thanks to the overpowering cult of personality surrounding the man, courtesy of the Information ministry and the numerous propaganda arms of the state.

Now discourse analysis is a multi-disciplinary tool which draws heavily upon other academic disciplines like philosophy, epistemology, linguistics, semantics, semiotics and literature.

It does not (and should not) be seen as a distinct discipline of its own which somehow renders the claims and findings of other approaches null and void. Our aim here is not to deny or question the approaches that have been taken by other writers like Chandra Muzaffar, Khoo Boo Teik, Syed Hussein Alattas and co.

We do not claim that discourse analysis provides the only answers not found by historical or material-economist analyses. But what we would like to do is to supplement these findings with some of our own, as seen through the lens of a discursive approach to the question at hand.

The problem is this: If Mahathirism is distinct from Mahathir, then what are its primary features and how does it work?

More importantly, how and why did it fail? (If it did at all, which is open for debate of course.)

An ideology

Teik's study of Mahathirism identifies it as an ideology which attempted to graft together a number of elements, ideas and values within a totalised and self-enclosed discursive economy that was self-referential in many ways.

Mahathirism, as an ideology, held certain key values and ideas like progress, development and material advancement as its 'transcendental signifiers' (that is, key concepts that were epistemically arrested and not part of the free play of meaning and signification).

The development of Mahathirism was predicated on the belief that these key ideas and values were above and beyond questioning - making them frozen in time and speech in a sense.

'Development' became a good thing in itself, for its own sake. So was economic progress, rationalism and certain 'Asian values' which invariably included feudalism.(3)

The success of Mahathirism in its early stages was that it managed to cobble together a number of important ideas that were part of the common aspirations of the Malaysian (and particularly Malay-Muslim) public at the time.

Mahathirism worked by stringing together a common 'chain of equivalences' between progress, development, modernisation, economic advancement, self-determination, national sovereignty and modernist Islam.

It worked by bringing together all these ideas within the rubric of a coherent thought and value system that imbued them with positivity.

Constitutive other

Conversely, Mahathirism also had its constitutive other, the unwanted element that needed to be eliminated or confronted: Against a string of positive ideas and values stood a string of negative counter-values that had to be rejected.

These included the West, communism, traditionalism, obscurantism, religious fundamentalism, 'Western' liberalism and militancy. Thus as an ideology, Mahathirism knew what it was and what it was not. The binary opposition between itself and the other was clear.

Because the ideology of Mahathirism was intimately linked to the man himself, Mahathir became the embodiment of his own ideology. As mentioned earlier, this tendency towards personalised politics and the cult of leadership was aided and abetted by those working in the numerous media and propaganda agencies closely linked to the government and the state.

In time, Mahathir became the living embodiment of his own set of beliefs that had taken on a life of its own.

The symbiotic relationship between Mahathir the man and Mahathirism the ideology was allowed to develop right up to the mid-1990s.

The 1995 elections were, in this respect, a resounding victory for both: It read as an endorsement not only of Dr Mahathir himself, but also of the philosophy and worldview of the man.

The slip

Now one thing that discourse analysis teaches us is that signifiers have a tendency to 'slip' from their signifieds. This, in effect, means that words and symbols tend to have shifting meanings which are characteristic of the free play of language.

Indeed, it is because of this inherent tendency for signification to 'miss' or 'slip' that language gets off the ground in the first place and metaphors come into existence.

Were it not for this inherent tendency for meanings to slip, the whole edifice of Mahathirism itself could never have been constructed. The vast and impressive columbarium of ideas and values that was Mahathirism was put together partly because of the way that the meanings of terms could be multiplied, shifted and grafted onto one another.

This way, the signifier 'Mahathir' could be linked to other concepts like modernity and progress, thereby erecting the chain of equivalences that was Mahathirism.

But the other feature of language is that it is never fixed in any way. Meaning and signification is always in a state of play and flux, and words develop numerous meanings as time goes by. (Just look at how general terms like 'Islam', 'jihad', 'democracy', justice', etc have evolved over time - these words retain some semblance of meaning despite the fact that they have been used and deployed in a number of ways. But it is this plastic nature of meaning that allows the words to have some sense in the first place.)

Now in the case of political discourse, words and symbols may change their meaning due to a radical crisis of dislocation which brings about a rupture in the old order of meaning. So when the French Revolution occurred, for instance, concepts like 'justice', 'liberty' and 'equality' could be radically reinterpreted and invested with new meanings.

Radical break

In the Malaysian context, a similar radical break took place with the economic crisis of 1997.

The economic crisis of 1997 effectively put into question the fundamental premises of Mahathirism itself. As the economies of East and Southeast Asia came crashing down in flames, the people of the region began to chant the litany of reform and revolution instead.

Indeed, in the Indonesian, Thai and Korean cases the calls for reform were understandable to say the least.

But what really sparked off the radical break from the past in Malaysia was not the economic crisis (for nobody could seriously think that Malaysia was in the same dire straits as Thailand or Indonesia), but rather the political in-fighting that took place within the ranks of Umno. After a failed putsch within his own party, Dr Mahathir removed his deputy Anwar Ibrahim, who had, until then, provided Mahathirism with one of the key elements that gave it is internal unity and coherence- namely, its Islamist credentials.

What made matters worse was the fact that in the weeks that followed the arrest and detention of Anwar Ibrahim, the state security forces also took action against those who were seen as his principal supporters.

The fact that most of those arrested were themselves members of Islamist organisations like Abim and Jim (and the fact that the police were also allowed to arrest protesters in places like mosques- widely regarded as a 'sacred precinct' by Malays) only served to erode the government's Islamist image further.

The sudden loss of Anwar created not just a physical void in the sense of an empty seat at the cabinet table, but also an ideological one. In the same way that Mahathir the man had been conflated with progress, development and economic well-being, Anwar was identified with Islam and Islamic credentials.

The chain of equivalences that kept together the grand narrative of Mahathirism was torn asunder as it lost one of its most vital components.

Now this sudden break or rupture in the discourse of Mahathirism robbed it of its internal cohesion and unity. Suddenly the master narrative no longer told a coherent story that made sense to the Malay-Muslim public.

Mahathirism, which had grown much bigger than Mahathir himself, was now about to experience a radical challenge from outside.

Endnotes

1) Dr Mahathir Mohamad was born in Seberang Perak, Kedah in 1925. In his youth he was drawn to the Malay nationalist struggle and he wrote extensively on Malay-related issues and concerns in the local press using the pseudonym 'Che Det'.

By then he was deeply worried about the state of the Malays in the British colony and their economic and political future should the country be granted their independence from Britain.

He later studied medicine at the King Edward VII College of Medicine at University Malaya which was then based in Singapore. After graduating he practised medicine at his MAHA clinic in Kedah before he became an active participant in Malay politics.

In the 60s he was widely regarded as an outspoken radical who condemned both the ineffectiveness of the Malay elite as well as Chinese domination of the Malaysian economy.

2) See: Khoo Boo Teik, ' Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad ', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995.

3) The feudalist outlook of Dr Mahathir was clear from the very beginning. In his controversial book The Malay Dilemma he wrote that:'In itself the feudalist inclination of the Malays is not damaging. It makes for an orderly and law-abiding society. People who could follow and observe an unwritten code of behaviour are easily made to observe the written laws of a country. People who accept that a society must have people of varying degrees of authority and rights easily make a stable society and nation. A revolution in such a society is unusual unless led from above. A feudal society is therefore not necessarily a dormant or retrogressive society. It can be a dynamic society if there is dynamism at the top. But when the top fails, or is preoccupied with its own well-being, the masses become devoid of incentive for progress.' (pp. 170-171), and: 'Even feudalism can be beneficial if it facilitates changes. The political Rajas of today can therefore institute change if they themselves are willing to change. (pg.173).