Paper short abstract:

This paper explores a critical junction of art, friendship, and resistance in the Malay art world to consider whether ‘friendship is more important than politics’ (Alyokhina 2014)

Paper long abstract:

Whether legitimized on the basis of nobility or democracy the State demands obedience beyond the call of friends. Malay interlocutors indicated a bifurcated, gendered response towards friendship, which implied specific attitudes towards the ‘moral experience’ (Throop 2014) of life in the Singaporean state. Unpacking visual fieldwork materials, this paper explores a critical junction of art, friendship, and resistance in the Malay world (‘alam Melayu). The late artist Mohammad Din Mohammad, my friend, collaborator, and key interlocutor insisted that 'friends are more important than wives' (situating friendship above kinship), recommended that people befriend angels, jinn, and death, and said we should be ready to die for our friends. Mhd Din expressed a firm view regarding friendship in the widely discussed foundational myth of the Malay state, the Sultanate of Melaka (1402-1511), where two friends fought a duel to the death; Hang Jebat betraying the Sultan for his friend, Hang Tuah ultimately betraying his friend for the Sultan. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore and Malaysia, peppered with insights from ‘practical philosophy’ (Deleuze 1988) this paper outlines an Indigenous theory of friendship at the foundation of Malay subjectivity and the state. Illustrated with Mhd Din’s artwork, in conclusion, I question the notion that: ‘Friendship is more important than politics’ (Alyokhina 2014)