2022
Viola Lasmana
Dissertation Abstract
"Shadow Imaginations: Transpacific Approaches to Post-1965 Indonesian Archives"
My dissertation analyzes cultural productions that would have been considered impossible narratives in the militaristic and repressive New Order era after the 1965 anti-communist genocide in Indonesia. Made possible through subversive means of creation, these various cultural texts become what Laurie Sears calls “situated testimonies,” offering “a method of reading the traces that elude archival constructions.”1 My work considers the shadows and traces that exist in the margins of the archive, in order to make the ghosts—the “bayangan,” an Indonesian word that means both “shadow” and “imagination”—alive again.
Shadow Imaginations performs comparative media analyses of literary, filmic, visual, and digital texts. Examining these works is a way of understanding how the construction of Indonesian public memory, as it relates to post-1965 events, is bound not only within the borders of Indonesia, but also deeply wound up with the United States’ history of imperialism across the Pacific. As a hermeneutic,
“shadow imagination” allows for a re-articulation of how these disparate global histories are critically intertwined, as well as allows for a re-orienting of cultural memory by excavating unspoken histories.
The first chapter focuses on Nobel Prize-nominated Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s writings, which originated as oral stories and fragments during his 14-year exiled imprisonment as a political dissident. The second chapter examines how poetry functions as ethical consciousness through Indonesian-born Chinese American Li-Young Lee’s works that focus on his childhood in Indonesia, where his father was imprisoned during a period of heightened anti-Chinese violence, before fleeing to the United States as refugees. The third chapter delineates the ways in which digital media productions, such as the Mapping Memory Landscapes data visualization project and EngageMedia video projects, have emerged as sites of resistance and digital archives of transformation. Finally, the fourth chapter focuses on narratives about marginalized women and queer communities via transnational omnibus films made by women filmmakers, Children of Srikandi (2012) and Chants of Lotus (2007), alongside Joshua
My dissertation analyzes cultural productions that would have been considered impossible narratives in the militaristic and repressive New Order era after the 1965 anti-communist genocide in Indonesia. Made possible through subversive means of creation, these various cultural texts become what Laurie Sears calls “situated testimonies,” offering “a method of reading the traces that elude archival constructions.”1 My work considers the shadows and traces that exist in the margins of the archive, in order to make the ghosts—the “bayangan,” an Indonesian word that means both “shadow” and “imagination”—alive again.
Shadow Imaginations performs comparative media analyses of literary, filmic, visual, and digital texts. Examining these works is a way of understanding how the construction of Indonesian public memory, as it relates to post-1965 events, is bound not only within the borders of Indonesia, but also deeply wound up with the United States’ history of imperialism across the Pacific. As a hermeneutic,
“shadow imagination” allows for a re-articulation of how these disparate global histories are critically intertwined, as well as allows for a re-orienting of cultural memory by excavating unspoken histories.
The first chapter focuses on Nobel Prize-nominated Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s writings, which originated as oral stories and fragments during his 14-year exiled imprisonment as a political dissident. The second chapter examines how poetry functions as ethical consciousness through Indonesian-born Chinese American Li-Young Lee’s works that focus on his childhood in Indonesia, where his father was imprisoned during a period of heightened anti-Chinese violence, before fleeing to the United States as refugees. The third chapter delineates the ways in which digital media productions, such as the Mapping Memory Landscapes data visualization project and EngageMedia video projects, have emerged as sites of resistance and digital archives of transformation. Finally, the fourth chapter focuses on narratives about marginalized women and queer communities via transnational omnibus films made by women filmmakers, Children of Srikandi (2012) and Chants of Lotus (2007), alongside Joshua
Dissertation Abstract
"Shadow Imaginations: Transpacific Approaches to Post-1965 Indonesian Archives"
Shadow Imaginations: Transpacific Approaches to Post-1965 Indonesian Archives analyzes cultural productions that would have been considered impossible narratives in the militarized, US-backed New Order regime after the 1965 anti-communist genocide in Indonesia, and examines the suppression of authors, filmmakers, women’s collectives, and activists in Indonesia in the wake of the militarized Suharto dictatorship in post-genocide Indonesia. Using a transpacific lens, this project explores the relationship between the archive and historical trauma, and how various Indonesian and Indonesian American literary and media productions function as alternative articulations beyond the confines of the archive and as spaces of resistance.
This project explores how these silenced voices act as counternarratives to state propaganda and open up spaces for community collaboration, cultural transformation, and local and global dialogue. These texts include transnational films by women’s collectives, such as Children of Srikandi and Chants of Lotus; literature by Indonesian-born Chinese American poet Li-Young Lee and Nobel Prize-nominated, exiled novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer; and digital community initiatives like EngageMedia and Mapping Memory Landscapes that have emerged as sites of resistance. I draw the term “shadow imaginations” from the Indonesian word “bayangan,” which has the double meaning of shadow and imagination.
If writing against historical traumas and narrative gaps are integral to transpacific imaginations (and re-imaginations), how do these works contribute to an emergent public sphere? My project is itself part of an emerging, alternative archive in the aftermath of the 1965-66 killings; this is a project that puts the past, present, and future into a continuum. The possibility of creating other futures, mobilized by the political and creative ability to imagine otherwise, always comes with an ethical responsibility. It is towards this possibility that this project seeks to bring together history, humanities, and the possibilities of digital research.
Shadow Imaginations: Transpacific Approaches to Post-1965 Indonesian Archives analyzes cultural productions that would have been considered impossible narratives in the militarized, US-backed New Order regime after the 1965 anti-communist genocide in Indonesia, and examines the suppression of authors, filmmakers, women’s collectives, and activists in Indonesia in the wake of the militarized Suharto dictatorship in post-genocide Indonesia. Using a transpacific lens, this project explores the relationship between the archive and historical trauma, and how various Indonesian and Indonesian American literary and media productions function as alternative articulations beyond the confines of the archive and as spaces of resistance.
This project explores how these silenced voices act as counternarratives to state propaganda and open up spaces for community collaboration, cultural transformation, and local and global dialogue. These texts include transnational films by women’s collectives, such as Children of Srikandi and Chants of Lotus; literature by Indonesian-born Chinese American poet Li-Young Lee and Nobel Prize-nominated, exiled novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer; and digital community initiatives like EngageMedia and Mapping Memory Landscapes that have emerged as sites of resistance. I draw the term “shadow imaginations” from the Indonesian word “bayangan,” which has the double meaning of shadow and imagination.
If writing against historical traumas and narrative gaps are integral to transpacific imaginations (and re-imaginations), how do these works contribute to an emergent public sphere? My project is itself part of an emerging, alternative archive in the aftermath of the 1965-66 killings; this is a project that puts the past, present, and future into a continuum. The possibility of creating other futures, mobilized by the political and creative ability to imagine otherwise, always comes with an ethical responsibility. It is towards this possibility that this project seeks to bring together history, humanities, and the possibilities of digital research.