Letting the Spirits Rest: Reconciling Indonesia's Past through unseen Realms

The presentation and historical interpretation of the events of post-Sukarno 1965 are often shrouded in fear and silence. Despite the efforts of NGOs, human rights groups and academics, attempts at reinterpretation or revising Indonesia's past have often met with fierce opposition. Groups which are religiously- or militarily-affiliated often brand any such attempt at revising the history of 1965 as being a conspiracy to raise the flag of communism on Indonesia's soil. Fringe groups such as the Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front) and the Front Anti Komunis Indonesia (Anti-Communist Front) have been at the forefront of violently disruptive actions against exhibitions, movie screenings, or even discussions about that specific period. These groups often brand revisionist retellings of 1965 as arising from an ethereal bahaya laten (latent danger) or komunisme gaya baru (new-style communism). This discourse bears an uncanny resemblance to the Orde Baru (New Order) regime's paranoiac fears of organisasi tanpa bentuk (formless organisations) subverting the state from within. Using opaque language and taking advantage of a "ghostly lexicon" that have already existed within Indonesia, the New Order regime was able to create an atmosphere of fear and foreboding. Nonetheless, despite the overthrow of Suharto's New Order regime, Indonesia continues to live amongst the shadows and phantasms which have yet to be exorcised even after nearly 20 years of democratic transition. This paper investigates the ghostly phenomena arising from the taboo-like nature of the events of 1965. I will specifically look at how spaces of past violence have been transformed into informal memorials testifying to Indonesia's "silenced past." I will also be investigating rumors and ghost stories hypothesizing that these elements represent a way in which the past expresses itself even as fringe factions and groups continue to maintain an "enforced silence" on the events of 1965. Through the investigation of these events and by presenting them as symbolic tropes, we can gain a deeper understanding of how nations and societies reconcile with their pasts in transitional contexts.

關鍵字

History ； Indonesia ； Human Rights ； Memory ； 1965 ； ghosts

並列摘要

印尼社會對1965事件的歷史解釋和呈現，時常籠罩在恐懼和沈默中。儘管印尼的非政府組織、人權組織以及學術界，嘗試重新解釋或修正這段過去的歷史，但卻經常遭到宗教或和軍方有關的組織強烈抨擊。他們將這段歷史描繪為共產主義在印尼土地的陰謀。伊斯蘭捍衛者前線（Front Pembela Islam）或反共陣線（Front Anti Komunis Indonesia）等邊緣組織使用暴力方式，企圖阻止有關1965事件的展覽、電影播放甚至是討論，並將修正主義（Revisionism）標籤化為隱性的危險或是新形式共產主義。此種說法與新秩序（Orde Baru）政權時期，不斷恐嚇人民會有無形組織顛覆國家的論述，極為相似。利用模糊的語言和幽靈般的詞彙，新秩序政權成功營造出讓人民恐懼的氛圍。儘管蘇哈托政權已被推翻，印尼經歷二十年的民主轉型，印尼人民仍生活在恐懼的陰影中。本文旨在探究因1965事件的禁忌性質引起的幽靈現象。我將聚焦在研究過去曾發生過暴力的空間，如何被轉化為證明印尼「沉默的過去」的非官方紀念場址。我也檢視傳聞和鬼故事，並假定這些傳聞和鬼故事是這些事件曾發生過的證據，即使前述的宗教和軍方有關的邊緣團體，持續透過許多方式想讓1965事件不被印尼民眾知道或討論。但透過將這些傳聞和鬼故事視為是象徵性比喻的研究，我們可更深入瞭解國家和社會，如何在轉型脈絡下與其過去的歷史和解。

並列關鍵字

歷史；印尼；人權；記憶； 1965 ；鬼魂

參考文獻

Auchter, Jessica 2014 The Politics of Hauntings and Memory in International Relations. New York: Routledge.

Barker, Joshua 1998 “State of Fear: Controlling the Criminal Contagion in Suharto’s New Order” in Indonesia, No.66 October pp.6-43.

Bennett, Caroline 2018 Living with the Dead in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 49(2): 184-203.

Bille, Mikkel; Frida Hastrup & Tim Flohr Sorenson 2010 Introduction: An Anthropology of Absence. In An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss. Mikkel Bille, Frida Hastrup & Tim Flohr Sorenson et al., eds. Pp. 3-22. London: Springer Press.

Burke, Peter 2015 “Afterthoughts on Afterlives”. In Afterlives of Events: Perspectives on Mnemohistory. Marek Tamm ed. Pp. 262-275. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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