I AM speculating. If Tun Arshad Ayub was still with us, the merger of communication with two other faculties may not have happened in the form as announced by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Vice-Chancellor Prof Roziah Mohd Janor on Sept 24.
On Oct 5, the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies Alumni registered its position against the merger. There was a media blitz. The alumni expressed disappointment with the faculty over the absence of consultation. It, however, suggested that a prior "dialogue" would have been much welcomed.
Communication study — to use "communication" as an umbrella term — remains oblivious to its academic status. It is not an academic discipline.
It is more of a "hodgepodge" field — as I first learnt more than four decades ago. Over the decades, it became a pit stop for a variety of interests from mathematics, art, engineering, sociology to philosophy.
Since the end of World War II, Communication, precisely Mass Communication, has emerged as a new field. Communication has been described as the "science of coercion" in Cold War propaganda. It is muddled, epistemologically, academically and politically.
Over the years, the roof of the communication department, depending on which region and society we are in, can be seen to be ever-extending with new journals and research clusters.
The field grows in multiple directions. The integration of new trends is common. But what has happened in the UiTM merger has led to the understanding that communication is administratively defined; not conceptually.
I have been writing on the landscape of the field over the decades, much meant for peers in the academy.
In my 2001 doctoral thesis titled An Intellectual History of Communication Study: Reconstituting the Field Toward a Unified Approach for the Human Sciences, and subsequently portions of it revised and published as a book titled Media History: Worldviews and Communication Futures (2005), I foresaw the death of the study of communication in its present form and its re-emergence in a post-disciplinary synthesis.
The ferment continues. After 50 years of its study in Malaysia, the communication fraternity does not delve on this, preferring to move themselves away from theoretical and conceptual concerns to the "bright lights", as reflected in the title of my 2008 book on the history of communication study in Malaysia, Blinded by the Lights (to borrowing a line from Bruce Springsteen, 1973).
The cry of "budak-budak mass comm" seems to be a moment frozen in time.
The early years from the 1970s (and through the '80s) have produced the dominating zeitgeist. The "school of mass communication" may not/should not be a stand-alone entity. But this appeared in an unexpected way effective Oct 1, recently.
The merger and restructuring exercise must come together with a curriculum revision, a reassessment of areas of concentration, and amendments to degree titles. This does not seem to be the order of the day.
My 2005 book, Media History, had projected a reassertion of the field, though dissimilar to the present structure. Sure, the field must respond to advances in technology and new social arrangements.
And there is a vacuum to be (re) filled from other disciplines, fields and themes — such as art, literary studies and philosophy.
Read Steve Jobs' biography (2011). It is not about technology. It is about humanity. The new post-disciplinary avatar makes communication the central synthesis for such a restructuring.
The mood from the '70s curriculum must liberate itself. It cannot be trapped in the past. The dominance and Euro-American imperialism, inherited from the '70s, needs to be dismantled. Tragically, half a century of intellectual imperialism has gone untampered with.
The faculty has lost an opportunity to delve deeper in deconstructing the historical moment into thinking about communication in this country. Having said that the development of journalism as a field, and its introduction in 1972 in ITM, must not be left unsaid.
Moving forward, without prejudice, the queen of UiTM's communication study is undoubtedly journalism — as a practice and as a corpus. Another direction at enhancing journalism would be a fitting tribute.
Cognizant of the critical importance of technological studies in communication, establishing a separate A. Samad Ismail Post-graduate School of Journalism is long overdue.
Samad's underappreciated enigmatic life and thought reflects the equally complex and long history of Malay journalism in Malaysia. But what happened to the A. Samad Ismail Chair of Journalism, launched by the faculty some 12 years ago?
The writer is professor of social and intellectual history, International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation, International Islamic University Malaysia