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Rommel Curaming is a PhD Candidate, Faculty of Asian Studies Australian National University

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On a slightly different tack, Daniel Lev deals with official history by focusing on its (mis)consumption. His article Memory, Knowledge and Reform is a searing indictment of the ‘absence of historical memory’ in the on-going efforts for reforms in Indonesia. He revisits the controversies surrounding the interpretations and assessments of the period of Parliamentary Democracy and regrets that even among the most reform-minded groups understanding of this period remains misted up by myths and inaccuracies and this cannot but ‘limits reform imaginations.’ More than any other contributions in the volume, he provides a vivid and concrete example of how the ‘distorted’ images past could stall reform efforts in the present.

Lev’s article, however, is interesting and important for another reason. He reminds us: “Where memory fails or subverted, knowledge has to be cultivated.” By doing so, he posits sharp oppositional relationship between memory and knowledge, and this brings us to yet another ambiguous terrain that begs clarification. What indeed is the relationship between historical memory and historical knowledge? For Lev, it seems quite straightforward. Historical knowledge is an authoritative knowledge. It undergoes rigorous and continual process of verification to ensure that it is nearer to the truth, if not the truth itself. It should thus act as basis for or guardian of memory whose fluidity makes it liable to inaccuracies and manipulation. Like Maier, he assumes the superiority of history over memory and he points to the danger that is immanent in the power ascribed to memory. While such views go against the grain of the volume’s apparent intent, the inclusion of Maier’s and Lev’s articles is suggestive of and it enriches the on-going debates among scholars as to the ‘proper’ shapes of historical and memory studies, if the two are indeed separable.

Three in four of the final set of paper focus on the analysis of sites of memories. More than any other papers, barring Zurbuchen’s introduction, they raise salient issues germane in the effort to understand the relationship between history and memory. The first is Klaus H Schreiner, Lubang Buaya: Histories of Trauma and Sites of Memory. This is a theoretically informed analysis of the monument and museum in Lubang Buaya as a site of memory. The author aptly demonstrates the monument and the museum as “symbolic, material and functional manifestations of the regime’s power to define the collective meanings of events.” He notes the fluidity of meanings which may be ascribed to a monument as a site of memory but nonetheless emphasizes the government’s effort to use Lubang Buaya as a means to regulate such meanings. Successful as he is in this undertaking, he seems to be not in his elements in handling the trauma aspect of his analysis. The paradoxical nature of trauma, as he himself alludes to, has not been clearly demonstrated, and this may be due to lack of clear explication of the relations between memorialising and trauma. Whereas he considers the monument and the museum as “negative expression of the trauma surrounding the generals’ death and the mass killings” of 1965-66, he was nonetheless unclear about whose trauma was inscribed in it. This question is important because to the extent that the event is ‘memorialised’ or ‘monumentalised’ by certain individuals or groups, trauma as analytic category ceases to be operative. It is of course implied that he was referring to the victims, their friends and relatives, as well as perhaps the witnesses and perpetrators of the mass-killings of 1965-66 who for decades have in traumatic silence, cannot find the means to deal with, much less the voice to narrate what happened. To these people, however, Lubang Buaya hardly qualifies as a site of memory through which their trauma may be expunged. This only goes to show that trauma

is a slippery concept which without clear explication can cloud one’s effort to explain. Nevertheless, it deserves further exploration as potentially efficacious conceptual or analytic construct.

Degung Santikarma’s Monument, Document and Mass Grave: The Politics of Representing Violence in Bali offers a complementary, in some ways contrasting, approach to that which is exemplified by Schreiner’s and Thufail’s. Devoid of any explicitly theoretical support, he presents a simple, yet riveting account and persuasive explanation for starkly different tenor by which power relations in Indonesia defines the protocol of representation of the Bali bombing and the killings of 1965-66. Seen through the pained eyes of an individual, Pak Nyoman, Santikarma’s powerful narrative pierces through the intellect, on to the visceral. One cannot but be reminded that the ultimate power of memory rests primarily in its individuality and that maybe no monument is necessary to ensure the act of remembering. Yet, the article also emphasizes the sociality of remembering and such sociality imposes on the individual certain limits that cannot be easily transcended. The beauty of this approach lies not only in its simplicity but also in its implied critique of the idea of ‘collective memory.’ It also saves the individual (rememberer) from drowning in the sea of ‘social’ sciences.

Another site of memory is the photograph. Karen Strassler’s Material Witnesses: Photographs and the Making of Reformasi Memory is an inspired, engaging and at some points provocative article on the use and the unrecognized misuse of photography as ‘witness to history.’ It argues that the use of photography as authoritative evidence of history is at once empowering and limiting in so far as students participation in the

reformasi movement is concerned. It empowers to the extent that photography cements the memory of students’ active role in such a movement—a stark reminder to the current and future Indonesian leaders of what students could and did in fact do. On the other hand, the frozen character of photographs if detached from the context which they were captured makes them liable to manipulation. And this is a possibility often ignored, by the students and the general public as well.

One enduring contribution of the article is that it convincingly demonstrates some of the efforts and the successes of the state ideological apparatuses in framing the student movement as part of the hegemonic New Order metanarrative of ‘youth struggle.’ Rather than as a radical break from the past, an interpretation which the students would have preferred, its continuity with past youth struggle has been emphasized, thus domesticating and denying it of temporal specificity and historical agency. The article, in effect, explodes the popular myth among the students themselves that photographs are unassailable ‘witness to history’ and as a locus of memory, they are useful in challenging the official version of history. It emphasizes that the ‘photographic efficacy has no predetermined effects’ and they can be invested with meanings apart from those produced in the actual context of their production. The article warns us “how impossible it is to sustain a romantic notion of popular memory as a oppositional reservoir of alternative historical truths untainted by the ideological effects of official history.” In my own estimation, this, along with Sear/Goenawan’s piece, offers the most significant contribution towards theoretical understanding of the relationship between history and memory.

What seems to weigh down heavily on her otherwise splendid analysis is her unstated assumption as to how things should have been. What she considers as the ‘failure’ of the students to ‘grapple in a profound way with the historical…construction of their own movement’ betrays her choice not to see the ‘movement’ through the myriad eyes of its participants. It is their ‘movement,’ that we should not forget, and it requires a dose of pretensions to stand on higher moral ground and proclaim that they failed to achieve a goal we as outsiders might have merely imposed upon them. For all we know, being active participants in such a movement—considering all the risks it entails—is a ‘personal success’ in itself for each of these students. Who are we do deny them the pleasure of reaping the fruits of their daring and labor? The author chides the students for ‘luxuriating in nostalgia for the heroic history’ they helped create as if being a part of such heroic history is not in itself a great achievement. Rather than being nostalgic, the students, so the author prescribes, should continue participating in the efforts to reform Indonesian society and politics. This prescriptive tone hinders, rather than help, in understanding the student movement, on one hand, and the nature of the photographs as sites of personal memory, on another. Lest we forget, they are ‘mere’ students, and their being necessarily poses limits to what they can and will do. The continuity of reform efforts, the momentum for which was helped achieve by the student movements, depend to a great extent, as the author herself admits, on forces beyond the confines of the campuses. It seems to require setting the benchmark too high to call the non-continuance of student participation in reformasi a failure of some sort.

More importantly, how each student uses the photographs as sites of memory is his/her prerogative. It is a testament to their personal powers to inscribe in these photographs memories imbued with personal meanings. The author herself emphasizes the open-ended nature of photographs—that they have no predetermined effects, no fixed meanings. It is thus ironic that by prescribing what should have been, she imposes on the students her own preferred way of seeing or using the photographs. By so doing, she joins the Indonesian ideological state apparatus that she warns us against in subverting the very function of photographs as sites of personal memory.

The volume is capped by Paul van Zyl’s article Dealing with the Past: Reflection on South Africa, East Timor and Indonesia. It compares the ‘transitional justice’ initiatives in the three countries and argues that while learning from other countries’ experience would be beneficial, it warns against uncritical adoption of certain model without regards to local specificities. Alongside the Zurbuchen’s editorial introduction, this article helps tremendously in locating the 13 other more specifically-focused papers within the broader context of scholarship on the field. It is to Zurbuchen’s credit that the volume is able to achieve balance between depth and breadth, not to mention unity amidst enormous diversity of views and approaches. This is an engrossing read.