The transnational construction of “national allegory”: China and the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia

Abstract

“The story of the private individual destiny,” declares Fredric Jameson, “is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society.” Using the case of China's involvement in the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia, this essay examines the transnational dynamisms of the making of a national allegory and discusses the production and reception of the China images in Sukarno's Indonesia (1949–65), with a focus on the PRC's cultural diplomacy and how Chinese literary principles were appropriated and domesticated, subsequently constituting an integral component of Indonesian cultural politics. Arguing that the narratives about China (both as a sociopolitical entity and a cultural symbol) served as an important transnational inspiration to public deliberations and cultural polemics—thus contributing to the formation of national allegories in postcolonial Indonesia, this essay takes the Jamesonian thesis a step further by suggesting that a transnational imaginary within Third World countries plays a significant part in the making of domestic literary politics. This essay may also be taken as an exercise in going beyond the nation-state-centric historiography that has been the defining characteristic of Asian Studies and pointing to the need to study Sino-Southeast Asian relations from the angle of cultural politics and its intertwining ambiguities with conventional diplomacy.     

Rejoinder

Abstract

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that

… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)     

Indonesia and the “conflictual consensus”: a discursive perspective on Indonesian democracy

In this essay we propose an alternative approach to assessing the state of democracy in Indonesia. We focus not on institutional indicators (as is usually the case) but on manifestations of political discourses in the public sphere. In applying post-Marxist political theory through the work of Slavoj ?i?ek and Chantal Mouffe, we argue that democracy’s main defining feature is that it allows antagonistic discourses about alternative policies to coexist, yet still manages to coalesce around a minimal consensus on how these discursive conflicts are to be dealt with in a fair way. Applying this approach to democracy analysis to Indonesia, we suggest that the major obstacles to democratic practice do not emerge from institutional problems, but from an overbearing political discourse that imposes broad consensus and harmony on most political issues. Political discourse in Indonesia is generally structured around “Islam” and “the people.” These themes provide a basis for a political consensus that conceals economic and social contradictions and reveals considerable depoliticization in Indonesian democratic practice.     

Debating Economic Democracy in South Korea: The Costs of Commensurability

ABSTRACT:

In the 2012 Korean presidential election, both liberal and conservative parties fought their campaigns on the slogan of “economic democratization,” marking a strong departure from past presidential elections and the growth-first policies of the then-incumbent conservative administration. Both parties pledged to tackle growing social polarization and the concentration of economic power by reforming the corporate governance of Korea's large, family-led conglomerates (chaebol), to the degree that chaebol reform itself became synonymous with economic democratization. This focus led to a series of heated exchanges among liberal-left reformers about the vision of economic democratization being promoted, with one camp favoring the creation of a “fair market” through the restructuring of the chaebol and another promoting the protection of the chaebol’s management rights over their affiliates as a desirable strategy for the creation of a Korean welfare state. This essay examines the long-standing tensions between these two liberal-left perspectives and argues that the capital-centric and market-based visions these camps promoted risk confining intellectual debate over the meaning of economic democracy within boundaries that serve dominant political interests.     

Imperialism and dependence

Abstract

“Indonesia [is] endowed … with what is probably the most strategically authoritative geographic location on earth …” So wrote Lawrence Griswold in Sea Power, the official journal of the Navy League of the United States in 1973. A nation so located, and with 130 million people, some of the world's richest deposits of oil, tin, bauxite, rubber, forestry reserves, and many other natural resources, is surely a place of major concern to the imperialist powers at a time when their empires are so rapidly shrinking. Particularly for the U.S. since the victory of the Vietnamese revolution, the vast resources and critical location at the juncture of the Pacific and Indian Oceans have likely made Indonesia, along with Iran and Brazil, a major lynchpin “of a new pro-U.S. constellation of power in the Third World.” There was no slip of the tongue when Richard M. Nixon referred to Indonesia as the “greatest prize in the Southeast Asian area.” Earlier some commentators had suggested plausibly that the massive American war effort in Vietnam after 1965 was linked intimately with the successful right-wing military takeover in October of that year in Indonesia, a takeover followed by one of the largest massacres in modern times and the establishment of a military dictatorship which has ruled the country for more than 11 years. During those years, the natural resources and large potential supply of cheap labor have motivated several multinational corporations to invest in Indonesia, and the profits from their operations have flowed to Japan, West Germany, and the U.S.     

Editor's Note: Special Feature – China,India, and the Future of Great-Power Politics

Abstract

This review essay is based upon Shuja Nawaz' Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within and Ayesha Siddiqa's Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy. Based upon these two author's insightful volumes, this essay explores the roles of both military and civilian actors and institutions in the undermining of Pakistan's constitutional rule of law. While conventional wisdom places the onus disproportionately upon the military's penchant for interventionism, this review essay contends that the army has intervened only with the active assistance of civilian institutions which are subsequently further eroded with every military takeover. Thus any long-term solution to democratize Pakistan must focus both upon the army's presumed “right” and “obligation” to intervene in Pakistan's political system while simultaneously strengthening and professionalizing those civilian institutions needed for providing good governance with accountability.     

Study and revolt

This essay is an inquiry into the forms of life and writing that emerge in the relation between study and revolt. After an initial sketch of the problem of “normal emergency” as it presents itself in post-apartheid South Africa, the essay then turns to a first reading of Richard Rive’s 1990 novel Emergency Continued in order to ask about the relations of study and revolt under conditions of a state of emergency. To deepen its reading of Rive, the essay makes a detour into the utopian theory of education set forth in 1972 by Richard Turner. The essay then turns to a second reading of Rive’s Emergency Continued in order to elucidate the unexpectedly utopian kernel of that text. The essay concludes with a reading of Zoë Wicomb’s short story “A Clearing in the Bush,” and a reflection on the relation between study and revolt under contemporary conditions.     

An introduction to the articles on Indonesia

Abstract

In May 1987, general elections will be held in Indonesia. These will be the fifth such elections since the country's independence in 1945, and the contesting parties will be the government electoral organization, GOLKAR, which convincingly won the last elections, the largely Muslim PPP (Unity Development party), and the small Christian and nationalist PDI (Indonesian Democratic party). After the previous elections in 1982, the Indonesian government made the claim that the proceedings had been “direct, general, free and secret,” and indeed it was difficult to find more than incidental evidence of fraud or manipulation in the conduct of the poll itself. However, this attempt by “Pancasila Democracy” to claim kinship with the Western democratic tradition studiously ignored the context of political restriction which has operated in Indonesia for the last three decades. Since such claims are likely to be revised after the coming elections to suggest that the power of the New Order government of President Suharto rests on the active consent of the people, the editors of the Bulletin have thought it appropriate to devote this issue to a closer examination of the recent political history of Indonesia.     

The Study of Religion and Society in Contemporary Asia: Colonialism and Beyond; Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modem States of East and SoutheastAsia

Abstract

In 1989, the Islamicist Bruce Lawrence suggested that, in a global context, the term fundamentalism should be replaced by the term antimodernism, which, to Mark Juergensmeyer, “suggests a religious revolt against the secular ideology that often accompanies modern society.” The papers in this volume are similarly concerned with the social implications of “religious revolt,” i.e., of continued religious vitality in lands that had presumably adopted “modern” patterns of secular nationalism. Such thinking, however, raises deeper issues about the very notion of “modernity.”     

The Pancasila Delusion

Rather than producing a new liberal democracy, Indonesia’s sudden democratising process that started in 1998 has produced a mere electoral democracy. This commentary argues that this situation cannot be separated from the preservation of the Five Principles, or the Pancasila, in the political reform agenda (reformasi). In this case, the Indonesian version of exceptionalism (national self-righteousness) has unwittingly legitimised some fundamental deviations from internationally well-established practices in global constitutionalism as the post Suharto Indonesia proceeds to “electoralise” its public life. Indonesia’s version of exceptionalism might best be described in an unabated conviction about the inviolable nature of Pancasila in national political life and beyond. This Pancasila delusion has gone further with the introduction of some legal efforts to prosecute any sacrileges against it. To make matters worse, this delusional conviction in Pancasila has stubbornly featured in Indonesia’s political thinking, which eventually has also prompted the process of reformasi to drift from one ad hoc response to another.     

Appendix: Lim Li-suat

Abstract

In his “Comments on Cham Population Figures,” Michael Vickery criticizes my 1988 article “Orphans of Genocide: The Cham Muslims of Kampuchea under Pol Pot.” “Kiernan has tinkered with the statistics in a tendentious manner in an attempt to prove the case for genocide,” he claims. Vickery accuses me of making “propaganda” and using “doctored evidence” to support it, of failing to make “honest use” of data, and of “fiddling with statistics to prove a particular political case, which cannot be made.”     

Book reviews

ABSTRACT

This essay looks at the figure of echolalia, the pathological repetition of someone else’s speech, to examine how Wicomb’s novel conceives of the formation of identity as an activity of speech in which the speaker is external to her own discourse. Speakers in this novel frequently disavow the agency and originality of their own voices as a way of distancing themselves from recent history. This disavowal of agency and culpability (“I didn’t vote for them,” etc.) paradoxically works to establish a subjective framework within which they can conceive of themselves as agentic individuals capable of social mobility through hard work. It ultimately argues that Wicomb’s novel offers an implicit rebuke to the politics of “the between” championed by many postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha. Moreover, Wicomb’s novel offers a formal response to a problem of subjectivity that has been too cleanly swept into the aesthetics of liminality and hybridity.     

Debating Indonesia’s Reformasi: Bridging “Parallel Universes”

Fifteen years after the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, scholars still continue to disagree over why he fell and what the subsequent process of political transition has actually entailed. A review of the literature reveals two competing interpretations. In the liberal camp, scholars draw on transition theories and argue that the fall of Suharto was caused by a “people power” mobilisation. Other scholars in the oligarchy literature who adopt theories of political economy, however, question this interpretation and argue that the fall of Suharto entailed a reorganisation of patrimonialism. The latter has been criticised by liberals for underestimating the significance of changes in post-Suharto Indonesia, though little engagement has taken place between these camps, which now constitute two “parallel universes.” This article argues that while the oligarchy camp tends to emphasise continuity, it still provides us with important insights into changes in post-Suharto Indonesia which are not adequately recognised by liberals. This is largely because their different theoretical roots prevent meaningful conversations. By reframing the oligarchy literature using the language of transition theories, this article clarifies the difference in the nature of change these two camps are respectively concerned with in the hopes of stimulating more constructive engagements between them.     

Beyond Modern: Shimizu Shikin and “Two Modern Girls”

Abstract

This essay introduces the translation of Shimizu Shikin's “Tōsei futari musume” (Two Modern Girls, 1897), which follows, and argues that by separating the body from gender, Shikin (1868–1933) effectively threatened the dimorphic ideology of sex that underpinned the literary establishment of Meiji Japan. In an essay written in 1896, Shikin posits an hermaphrodite combining allegedly gendered character traits in a “perfect” body, thus asserting that behavioral traits are not limited to one sex. Shikin calls attention not only to “the second sex” but a third sex decades before twentieth-century writers did in Japan and elsewhere, and she was erased because of it.     

Introduction to dalit poems

Abstract

The word dalit in Marathi, the language spoken by 50 million people in the state of Maharashtra in Western India, means “downtrodden,” “ground down,” or “depressed.” A caste-less word which ex-Untouchables have chosen for the new school of literature they have created, it includes all those who have suffered from the religio-social system. Short stories by ex-Untouchables began to appear in the 1950s, but the great swelling of creativity — poetry, novels, short stories, plays — appeared only in the late 1960s. The school is acknowledged by the Marathi literary establishment as a new and important development in the long history of Marathi literature. It represents a new voice, and its themes are protest, grievance, pride — and often revolution.     

Never Say Never: Considerations about the Possibility of Australia Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Australia's decision to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and forego the acquisition of nuclear weapons was taken on medium-term strategic grounds. While similar circumstances prevail today, it is possible to identify three conditions for the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Australia to be a credible option: the existence of a major threat to Australia; a loss of confidence in US guarantees; and allied acquiescence to an Australian nuclear program. These conditions interact with Australia's relationship with Indonesia and the technological and industrial feasibility of “tactical” and “strategic” nuclear weapons postures, respectively. The only Australian nuclear posture that does not lack credibility in light of all these factors is the use of “tactical” weapons to deter major landings on the Australian mainland.     

New Constellations of Social Power: States and Transnational Private Governance of Palm Oil Sustainability in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting change in corporate and state agricultural practices implicated in the environmental damage and social conflicts caused by oil palm cultivation in Indonesia and Malaysia by examining in detail the social processes through which non-state actors engage in governance. Sceptics of private regulation point to the powerful state–business patronage networks in these countries as structural impediments to reforming this sector. Drawing on the literature on global production networks, I show how producers deeply embedded within such supportive local political economies nevertheless choose to comply with stringent global private standards to reduce risks to their global operations. It was the renewed emphasis on supply chain “traceability” to demonstrate responsible corporate behaviour to investors, buyers and consumers that served to embed globally-oriented palm oil plantation firms and their upstream suppliers into emerging ethical supply chains. Embedding occurs through three social processes – surveillance, normalising judgement and knowledge transfer. The private regulatory developments analysed in this article, though relatively recent, are supported by a diverse transnational coalition of principled and instrumental interests and have created significant openings for a new, or at least, parallel, and more progressive, private regulatory order in Malaysia and Indonesia.     

Hunger

Abstract

Books about hunger and its causes are nothing new, as anyone who follows development literature is well aware. This is probably because hunger itself has been around as long as people have been writing books. Nevertheless, 1974 was the year of a “world food crisis”: the United Nations saw fit to convene a world food conference in Rome, and a spate of new books has appeared in its aftermath to discuss the problem. Why a crisis should have congealed in 1974 from the world's perennial hunger is one of the subjects ably considered by Collins and Lappe's Food First and Susan George's How the Other Half Dies. Why so much has been written about it is a subject worth considering here.