Remembering through fragmented narratives: Third generations and the intergenerational memory of the 1965 anti-leftist violence in Indonesia

Abstract

This article focuses on the intergenerational memory within families directly implicated by the 1965 anti-leftist violence in Indonesia. Under the culture of impunity, the violence remains at the margins of Indonesia’s history and collective memory, creating taboo and suppressing open talk about the event. However, taking a critical approach, we perceive this social silence as a conscious strategy of survival, rather than a fear of state repression. This strategy implicates the ways memories of violence are transferred to the following generations – when, what and how narratives are delivered or muzzled. It is also silence that actually catalyses the preservation of those memories within the families. Through the lens of the third generations in three different families of survivors, we examine how they undergo and sustain silences and narratives of violence in the family, including how they maintain those memories in the present and for the future. In relation to that, our study supports the prevailing notions that argue against interpreting silence as absence. Instead, these case studies show that in silence, memories of violence seep through what we call fragmented narratives – the incomplete, incomprehensible, irrational and sometimes mythical knowledge or experiences related to 1965 violence. In other cases, silence in the family takes the form of depoliticising figures of the first generation – detaching all their political activities and ideologies from recollection of activism.

Songs from another land: Decolonizing memories of colonialism and the nutmeg trade

“…Much of this activism, however, has been directed towards achieving mnemonic and political change in relation to how cases of military violence perpetrated during the Suharto era are remembered and addressed by the Indonesian government. For the last 20 years memory activism in relation to the 1965 military directed genocide has included public campaigns of remembrance, an international people's tribunal, documentary film productions, digital memory projects and a range of artistic and literary works (see Leksana, 2020;Leksana and Subekti, 2023;McGregor, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, Wieringa et al, 2019. The drivers of this activism have been survivors of the violence, their children and grandchildren as well as human rights groups.…”

Memori melompat (‘jumping memory’): The mnemonic motion of Indonesian popular culture and the need for a local reframing

“…Indonesian memory studies is increasingly interested in the national trauma of the 1965-1966killings (i.a. Larasati, 2013Leksana, 2023;Leong, 2023;Marching, 2017), but Indonesian popular culture underscores that independence war representations are hardly that of a 'difficult past'. The need to articulate other or underrepresented narratives is present nonetheless, and explains why there is still a desire to cope with past and present issues.…”

Teachers' Narratives about the Possibility to Teach Controversial History of the 1965 Affair in Indonesia

“…The government-issued textbook of the current curriculum (2013 curriculum) contains competing versions about the perpetrator while the story of anticommunist massacres remained unmentioned. Also, as Ahmad (2016) and Riyandanu (2020) elaborated, there was still an inclination to narrate the communist party as the culprit in the textbook, and the whole story was entitled September 30 Movement/ Indonesian Communist Party, a typical title that was used under Soeharto's regime to mark the culpability of all people connected with the party (Leksana 2009).…”