The essay examines the growth of politics of morality in post-Suharto Indonesia by linking it to the genealogy and characteristics of the Indonesian middle class, especially during the New Order period, without reducing the issue to primordialism or Islamic revivalism. Instead, it tries to address the issue by looking into the internal contradiction of the Indonesian middle class, whose identity and definition remain murky and muddled. A survey of some key thoughts proposed by several leading scholars regarding Indonesian national culture, nationalism, and middle class is offered in order to better understand the link between the middle class and its vision of national culture, and how morality politics emerges as a new, dominant factor in the formation of such a vision. This essay focuses on the development that has taken place during the post-Suharto era, which began with the Reformasi in 1998 that witnessed the demise of the New Order's domination, and how various elements of the middle class reacted in different ways to social and cultural issues emerging in post-Suharto Indonesia, revealing the complexity and heterogeneity in the moral and political views of the group.
Beside accepted with surprise across the world, the winning of Brexit referendum also brings up the tangled web into the United Kingdom’s political and cultural realms. Recent studies mention there is correlation between the voting behavior and issues of identity, immigration, and Islamophobia. Kamila Shamsie alludes these issues in her latest novel, Home Fire (2017). By focusing on three main protagonists, this close-textual analysis examines how Pakistani diasporic community construct their identities within the novel. To support the analysis, this article draws upon Hall’s identity theory (1990) and Bhabha’s Unhomely (1992). Research findings show how Shamsie’s novel represents heterogeneity within Pakistani Muslims diasporic identities, rather than frame them within single collective identity. Therefore, the novel criticizes Eurocentric biases point of view by portraying Muslim female protagonists’ fluid identities while defending their Muslimness by using veil and praying to God. On the other hand, the novel maintains established stereotype by drawing Muslim male protagonist’s affiliation with Daesh as representation of radical group to problematize the notion of radicalism.
No abstract
The downfall of Suhartos New Order in 1998 has opened up a new era of political freedom and participation for activists and for groups that try to promote emancipatory agendas as well as for political Islamists keen on introducing tougher conservative, religious measures to society. Womens activism and participation in different sectors has flourished, and their voices have had much stronger echoes in the political dynamics of the country. However, the new era has also given rise to Islamic radicalism that is also hostile to feminist causes and perceives feminism as part of the Western hegemonic project. In such a slippery political terrain, womens movements in Indonesia have to remake the image of feminism in Indonesian terms so that it cannot be dismissed as an ideology imported from the West and, simultaneously, they must develop a home-grown counter-discourse against the mainstream interpretation of sacred texts by using the same sources of knowledge that the Islamists employ. To what extent women activists have succeeded or failed in their struggles to free Indonesian Muslim women from the shackles of the male-dominated reading of Islamic dogma, and what the future trajectories of their struggles might be, are the primary concerns of this essay.
MANNEKE BUDIMAN teaches literature and cultural studies at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. He was trained in English Literature, Comparative Literature, and Asian Studies. He also teaches at the Graduate Program of Urban Studies, the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. He serves at the editorial boards of some scholarly journals, including Jurnal Ilmu Sastra dan Budaya SUSASTRA and Jurnal Lintas Bahasa TRANSLINGUA. In addition, he is currently Series Editor for Kota, Kata dan Kuasa (Ombak Press
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