Ripples, Echoes, and Reverberations: 1965 and Now in Indonesia

In Indonesia, during six months in 1965-1966, between half a million and a million people were killed during a purge of suspected Communist Party members after a purported failed coup d’état blamed on the Communist Party. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were imprisoned without trial, many for more than a decade. The regime that orchestrated the mass killings and detentions remained in power for over 30 years, suppressing public discussion of these events. It was not until 1998 that Indonesians were finally “free” to discuss this tragic chapter of Indonesian history.In this dissertation, I investigate how Indonesians perceive and describe the relationship between the past and the present when it comes to the events of 1965-1966 and their aftermath. Do the killings and detentions still emerge in and influence daily life today? If so, how? The experiences, interactions, and conversations I had and the interviews I conducted during two years of fieldwork, primarily in Yogyakarta on the island of Java, shape the form and focus of this dissertation. I examine how space and time are entangled when it comes to the events of 1965-1966 and the present day. I explore how the propaganda about these events continues to be circulated, internalized, and expressed in daily life, resulting in fear and paranoia that is managed through practices of surveillance and self-surveillance. I investigate stigmatization in the lives of my informants and the ways that stigma is assigned, transmitted, managed, and eluded. I explore the silences that weave themselves around this topic, and I focus on two case studies of ruptures in this silence that allow for new forms of voicing, authorship, and education. I explore the forms of satisfaction or justice my Indonesian informants want but do not expect to achieve. I offer a typology that reveals the complexities in the categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” when it comes to the events of 1965-1966 and their aftermath. Finally, I write about a few events that occurred after I left the field that illustrate the ongoing unfolding of this history today. Throughout the dissertation, I illuminate the ways in which the events of 1965-1966 continue to powerfully shape the subjectivities, social worlds, experiences, and identities of my informants nearly 50 years after the killings first began