The Left and Indonesia’s 1960s: the politics of remembering and forgetting

Abstract

This article examines a pivotal decade in the recent history of Indonesian society: the 1960s. It examines the context within which the Left came to be decisively, and violently, defeated as a social and political force. It then studies the consequences of this defeat for Indonesia’s subsequent historical trajectory. The article also suggests that history‐writing anywhere is nothing less than the politics of remembering (and forgetting). What is at stake in these exercises is ultimately tied up with the legitimacy of entire social orders and systems of power. Thus, in Indonesia, the trauma of 1965 and its aftermath banished, from the collective memory of Indonesians, the political role of the Left – except in the form that runs through New Order‐era discourse on Indonesian communism. For Indonesians born or raised after 1965, the ‘communist treason’ became, arguably, the most critical element of the grand narrative of post‐colonial Indonesian history, which was so important in legitimising New Order authoritarianism. The current inability of Indonesian society and its elites to acknowledge and confront the reality of the horrors of the 1960s might prove to be a major impediment to a more genuine and substantive democratisation process.     

Renationalisation and resistance of Hong Kong cinema: Milkyway Image’s journey to Mainland China

Hong Kong cinema is an emerging component of the booming Chinese film industry twenty years after the transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to China. Hong Kong filmmakers and film companies now routinely collaborate with the mainland industry to produce for the mainland audience, prompting many creative artists and companies of the Hong Kong industry to relocate to the mainland. Based on the fundamental idea that both mainland Chinese cinema and Hong Kong cinema are constantly reshaping as a result of inter- and trans-cultural exchanges, this article adopts a bottom-up approach to re-examine the top-down-managed cultural nationalisation of Hong Kong cinema. Hong Kong (co-)produced films are increasingly devoid of local sensibilities and identities. Film companies and talents of the Hong Kong film industry, at least in the mainstream sector, are gradually incorporated into the film industry in the mainland. Notwithstanding these overwhelming tendencies, I suggest that Hong Kong cinema’s legacies exist beyond narrative strategies and genre approaches, and have started to show in film companies’ role in, and their capability of, challenging and reshaping the future of the Chinese screenscape. Specifically, through the examination of a series of film projects from Milkyway Image, a Hong Kong-based film production company, this article shows that Hong Kong cinema’s renationalisation is a process of simultaneous cooperation, negotiation, and resistance.     

Responding to Hong Kong’s political crisis: moralist activism amongst youth

ABSTRACT

Discourses of morality are prevalent in contemporary Hong Kong youth activism. This paper suggests that this moralist disposition is the product of youth frustrations towards Hong Kong’s political crisis, whereby the power gap between civil society and the government renders the former incapable of exerting substantial influence over the governance of the city. Rather than ascribe the cause of this power imbalance solely to government policies, this paper reveals that civil society also contributed towards the making of this political crisis. By reviewing the citizen-led pro-democracy movement throughout the decades, it is shown that civil society has been ineffective in implementing political reforms because its actors and organisations harbour a political subjectivity that prioritises economic considerations over democratic aspirations, and are thus inclined to compromise with the government to preserve economic stability than to demand for political reforms. As a result, contemporary youth activists describe Hong Kong civil society as “uncaring” and lacking in moral commitment towards realising democratic reforms that will facilitate the development of a just society. Seeking to reconfigure such political attitudes that currently prevail in civil society, youth activists refashion themselves into political actors embodying a form of moral personhood that embraces notions of responsibility and of wanting to do good for the city, to show that another way of being politically engaged in Hong Kong is possible.     

The ‘truth politics’ of anti‐North Koreanism: the post‐ideological cultural representation of North Korea and the cultural criticisms of Korean nationalism

Abstract

This essay questions the ‘truth politics’ of anti‐North Koreanism in which a ‘genuine’ figuration of North Korea is presumed to be achievable at the popular level. I define the truth politics of anti‐North Koreanism as the political‐cultural discursive formation obscuring the ideological powerfulness of anti‐North Koreanism that hinges on ‘the normality of nationalism’. The truth politics reinscribes and reinforces the populist and functionalist belief in national unification that justifies developmentalist agendas for North Korea. As an alternative, I discuss the post‐colonial cultural criticism that calls into question the identity politics of popular nationalism, which implicitly performs along the lines of the Sunshine Policy guidelines to naturalize the normality of nationalism under economic developmentalism. The questionable formation of nationalism prevents South Koreans from gaining self‐reflexive access to the way in which heterogeneous tropes of the nation rupturing in the discursive practice of popular nationalism are exploited. But I also critically interrogate the analytical framework presumed within the criticism, because it constrains its own scope and abilities of questioning the truth politics of anti‐North Koreanism the criticism ostensibly targets.     

Fat Acceptance TV?: Rethinking Reality Television With TLC’s Big Sexy and the Carnivalesque

Big Sexy (2011), a television mini-series on TLC, tells the story of five “larger than life” Manhattan women working in the fashion industry. In comparison to dozens of reality television programs that emphasize weight-loss, Big Sexy critiques the idea that all fat individuals need to lose weight, or should even want to lose weight in the first place. This resistant message of fat acceptance exists in a carnivalesque televisual space, creating a site for the interplay of competing, yet increasingly co-present discourses of the body despite the dominance of “obesity epidemic” rhetoric. Ultimately, Big Sexy necessitates a different theoretical lens than the one often applied to reality television, namely neoliberalism in relation to governmentality, shame, and self-discipline, in order to make sense of its uniqueness within this continually expanding genre.     

Associative identity politics: unmasking the multi‐layered formation of queer male selves in 1990s Japan

Abstract

This paper discusses one way to articulate queer male identity politics in 1990s Japan through Fran Martin’s conceptualization of the ‘mask’ (Martin 2003 Martin, Fran. 2003. Situating sexualities: queer presentation in Taiwanese fiction, film and public culture, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.  [Google Scholar]). By comparatively examining two key Japanese ‘gay’ coming‐out narratives, the paper shows how a reading of queer subject formation in the decade through a metaphor of ‘masking’ can shed light on the complex scenarios functioning beneath the surface of identity politics. I argue that the notion of ‘masking’ is useful in reading the multiple axes incorporated into queer identity formation in Japan in the context of globalization. The paper further refutes any reductive claim that queer identity in Japan can be understood in terms of essentialist epistemological binaries, such as global/local, West/non‐West, and Japan/abroad.     

China’s popular nationalism on the internet. Report on the 2005 anti‐Japan network struggles 1

Abstract

In April 2005, waves of anti‐Japan protest swept China and South Korea. In China, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in more than 40 cities to protest against Japan over its irresponsible attitude toward the history of colonial rule and war crimes of 60 years ago. Despite the protest having a strong ground and its action being generally non‐violent and peaceful, it was then severely condemned by many Western critics and media as chauvinistic and irrational, and as being manipulated by the Chinese government to legitimize its rule. Against such a notion, this essay attempts to work with China’s ‘popular nationalism’ (renmin minzu zhuyi), and considers its space as an autonomous political domain that is independent of the state nationalism. The ‘cyber‐nationalism’ (wanglu minzu zhuyi), this paper argues, not only challenges the state monopoly over domestic nationalist discursive production, but also opens up new possibilities for performing common people’s ‘public discursive right’ (gonggong huayu quanli). Far from being a homogeneous unity, the online campaign is characterized by free exchange of information and lively debate over the boycott strategy.     

The left‐wing movement in Malaya,Singapore and Borneo in the 1960s: ‘an era of hope or devil’s decade’?

Abstract

The 1960s was a period of Leftwing resurgence in the world. As Britain was disengaging from its empire, the ethnically plural societies she had generated within her protectorates and colonies in Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei threw up anti‐colonial movements that began struggling towards self‐determination and national independence. These movements manifested the ideologies of communism, socialism, nationalism and communalism. As British imperialism began planning its retreat, the competition for power among the local movements became intense. In Malaya, the largest of the five colonial territories, the communist party launched an armed rebellion in 1948 in the name of national liberation and independence, but made little headway. As Singapore and Malaya were closely linked and ruled, Britain introduced emergency rule in both territories. Most leftwing parties disappeared. Nationalist and communalist parties in Malaya emerged and eventually succeeded in securing national independence from Britain in 1957. Singapore was given a measure of limited self‐government in 1955, while Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei were gradually awakened towards self‐government. Leftwing parties re‐surfaced in Malaya, and in Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei in the 1950s and 1960s, and made some headway in parliamentary elections. This paper presents a historical account of their resurgence, which was however short‐lived.     

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films: pursuing and escaping history

Abstract

This article situates Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films in the post Cold‐War global setting. It discusses two common interpretive approaches to Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films – French auteurism and ‘national allegory’ – and puts these two approaches within their historical context of Cold‐War and post Cold‐War global politics. The article places the rise of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films parallel to the rise of the mainland fifth generation of film directors, pointing out that their apparently opposite directions – Hou Hsiao‐Hsien going political in his Taiwan trilogy and the fifth generation film directors going apolitical – are part and parcel of the same phenomenon of alternative politics in its particular contexts and the reconstruction of a new identity politics. Particular attention is given to Hou’s Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of Shanghai, and Coffee Jikou.     

Sitting on the dock of the bay: 1 partial views of change – Singapore,Tokyo and Hong Kong

Abstract

Cities embody the political projects of elites; the spaces that are made frame the lives of their inhabitants; it is within these spaces that ordinary people make their lives. Cities seem dense, resistant and hard but they are always in flux; their transience marks their elites’ responses to the shifting demands/opportunities of changing circumstances; change has its benefits and its costs; these are not borne equally; all these matters can be accessed in many ways, here the route is though the accumulation of ethnographic detail; partial recollection; cities illuminated through the small scale; it is the way in which we all grasp the cities in which we live.     

‘Of lost fathers and broken sons’: Farish Noor on the politics of love and the new thought in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper addresses the polemical and intimate writings of one of Malaysia’s leading public intellectuals, Farish Noor. Straddling secularism and Islamism, Noor’s ideas are informed by a compassion that seeks to bypass monotheism and an ethnically informed nationalism. An advocate of a multiethnic and plural society, Noor does not merely reject Islamism; rather, his thinking seeks to reconcile and transcend what he perceives as a false dichotomy between a system of reason and a system of belief. The achievement of this transcendence is a fraught one for it sometimes seems that Noor involuntarily contradicts himself. To resolve this contradiction I turn to Gille Deleuze’s work, Pure Immanence, which, I argue, provides a key in‐road into understanding the complexivity of Noor’s thought, in particular his valorization of love and his canny and novel attempts to interpret what he calls an ‘other Malaysia.’     

Nations in shame and art’s shame: towards a radical politics of image and affect around “Okinawa”

ABSTRACT

This article first examines the resurgence of popular, semi-academic nationalist discourses that solidify the figures of “Japan” and “Okinawa” within post-1945 U.S.-led formation of nation-states across the Asia-Pacific. It critiques two discourses that are symptomatic of such a return to the figure of the nation: developmental economist Matsushima Yasukatsu’s thesis of “Ryukyu’s independence” and philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya’s call to relocate the U.S. military bases from Okinawa to mainland Japan. These symptomatic instances of the mutually transferential nationalisms in Okinawa and mainland Japan rely upon crudely culturalist assumptions about the self and the others and are thus surprisingly oblivious to how the very nation-forms have been instituted as part of imperial modernity. Their implicit figurations of the exemplary national subjects partake in the biopolitical assumptions as to whose lives must be “made to live” and “made to die” within and outside the border of the national. Ultimately, such nationalist discourses about Japan and Okinawa engage in a zero-sum exchange of imperial shame and colonial shame, a process that further stabilizes the co-operative placement of local nation-forms within the U.S.-led inter-state regime of warfare and biopolitics. But insofar as these discourses require the images of the nations that they seek to represent, their (re)production of what Naoki Sakai calls “a schema of co-figurative” nationalities needs to be critiqued through an exploration of a radical aesthetics and affect that pertain to image production.

The second part of the article presents my interpretation of artist Nema Satoko’s recent book of photography titled Paradigm, a work in which both bodies and objects explore their potential transformations in the midst of their precarious exposure to one another. I argue that Nema’s images of fragile bodies and objects in the present landscape of Okinawa are poised on the cusp between the past that invokes a sense of shame and this past’s potential future that necessitates an ethical posture of humility. In the vicinity of Adorno’s notion of “art’s shame,” Nema’s photographic images illuminate an amorphous realm of fragile beings, whose linkage and exposure to one another opens a space of viability that is obscured by the biopolitical imaginaries of nation-forms.     

In between home and homeland: Diaspora identity as a cultural hybrid in Mohsen Namjoo’s “Cielito Lindo”

ABSTRACT

Rather than resisting either new or old culture, Iranian musicians in the diaspora embrace both their new host environments and their native homeland, as they create a place between cultural assimilation and preservation, helping to shape new sounds of exile. This essay explores how Iranian musicians embrace the new and the familiar, the traditional and the popular, creating an original cultural hybrid. Questions of cultural identity and the politics of location and displacement are addressed using a theoretical cultural studies framework, incorporating themes of personal and collective nostalgia. This discussion is supplemented by documented narrative experiences from Iranian musicians and artists. Furthermore, the textual and musical analysis of singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo’s readaptation of the familiar Mexican ranchera song “Cielito Lindo” uncovers unique nuances and layers of meaning that not only shed light on one musician’s personal journey to exile, but also speak to a greater collective experience of Iranians today who continue to be torn between home and homeland.     

Seniors’ organizations in China’s new rural reconstruction: experiments in Hubei and Henan

This article tracks the shifting cultural meanings that the East/West distinction has produced in the history of nationalism in colonial and post-colonial India. It does so by focusing on the word “civilization” and the role it played in promoting a rich sense of inter-cultural dialogue in the writings of nationalist leaders such as Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The article documents how the word figures with much reduced significance in contemporary cultural debates about globalization in India and concludes by asking if the rise of China and India to global prominence holds the potential today to initiate a conversation across cultures similar to the one that accompanied the rise of the West in the age of modern imperial rule.     

‘A Million Little Bonds’: Infidelity,Divorce and the Emotional Worlds of Marriage in British Women’s Magazines of the 1930s

This article examines infidelity discourse within women's magazines of the 1930s. Marking a departure from existing studies that have explored representations of ideal marriage, it uses discussions of marital breakdown as a lens through which to consider conceptualisations of love within marriage. It demonstrates how, in the interwar period, notions of mutual emotional investment were used to reinforce marriages that were deemed to be in breakdown. Muddying the perceived binary between individuals and the institution of marriage, this research highlights how the latter could be bolstered, rather than challenged, by recourse to the emotional worlds of spouses.     

‘We want everybody’s salvage!’: Recycling,Voluntarism, and the People’s War

ABSTRACT

This article reveals the role of volunteers in the British government’s campaign to increase recycling during the Second World War. It uses their experience to deconstuct the idea of a 'people's war', showing how this concept was invoked in several different ways. The article demonstrates that voluntary recycling schemes were led from the bottom-up, shifted the balance of power between private citizens and local authorities, and highlighted difference based on age, socio-economic status, gender, and geographical location. It concludes that official appeals may have invoked the ‘people’s war’, but the way that these messages were received was of most importance.