On Simulacrum and Intellectualism in Di Negeri Belalang by Anwar Ridhwan

This article is concerned with the tendency observable in the critical reception by literary scholars and critics of Anwar Ridhwan’s third novel, Di Negeri Belalang (henceforth, DNB). Many scholars and critics believe that DNB is replete with intellectual discourse. Even Anwar Ridhwan’s claims that his novels are written based on the Malay-Islamic tradition. However, this admission draws attention to the publisher’s blurb of DNB which associates this work with the concept of simulacrum, a Western literary theory that is rooted in the philosophy of postmodernism. It is generally known that the philosophy of postmodernism is in stark conflict with the principle of tawhid in Islam. Indirectly, this reveals a certain contradiction in Anwar Ridhwan’s admission of DNB’s intellectualism. Therefore, this study aims to identify DNB’s tendency, by fulfilling two objectives: analyzing the work by Anwar Ridhwan and summarizing the question of intellectualism that is said to be contained in its pages. This article employs the framework of Persuratan Baru (henceforth, PB), which is a framework of analysis that is formulated by a local scholar. This choice is based on the ideas of PB which discuss the questions of knowledge, intellectualism, and Islam in literature. By employing PB, this study succeeds in summarizing the question of intellectualism in DNB. This analysis can explain the tendency contained in Di Negeri Belalang which portrays the reality of human life as being ever surreal, which is one of the elements of simulacrum in the philosophy of postmodernism. This study finds that the tendency referred to contradicts the worldview of Islam that is rooted in tawhid.