Sacred and Cursed Bodies: The Necropolitics in the Suharto Regime’s Politics of Memory

ABSTRACT

The article investigates the Suharto rule regime’s use of necropolitics to construct Indonesia’s memory of the 1965–66 mass murders. These memory politics were based on the anti-communist myth, which was the basis of the memory formation and creation of positive and negative heroes closely related to political changes. The regime used the bodies of generals who were killed during the attempted coup for political purposes, thus permanently anchoring this image in Indonesian society’s space and memory. Herein, the image of the generals’ bodies is juxtaposed with that of the victims’ bodies, which are still cursed and excluded from official Indonesian history. These necropolitics served the Suharto regime’s various interests of power, knowledge, and the clash between sacred and cursed bodies. Thus, the generals’ and victims’ bodies enhanced Suharto’s credibility. In this context, the generals’ bodies are treated as sacred, while the victims’ bodies are considered to be cursed, but both are causative agents of the development of the regime’s historical narrative, collective memory, and national identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics of memory
• necropolitics
• necroviolence
• Indonesian mass murders 1965–66

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude to the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, KITLV, Leiden for providing me the opportunity to serve as a Visiting Research Fellow during the 2019-2020 period, as well as for the support during the preparation of this paper. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of the Journal for their valuable feedback on the initial draft of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder. The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin. Press, 2006).

2. The number of murdered victims often given by researchers of mass murders in Indonesia in 1965–66 is 500,000–1,000,000 (Saskia Wieringa, Jess Melvin, Annie Pohlman, The International People’s Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide, London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 12.

3. See Saskia Wieringa and Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Propaganda and the Genocide in Indonesia: Imagined Evil (1st ed) (London: Routledge, 2019).

4. Katharine McGregor, Jess Melvin and Annie Pohlman (eds), The Indonesian Genocide of 1965. Causes, Dynamics and Legacies (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2018).

5. For the discussion of how people remember, forget or silenced the 1965 violent past as a part of a web of local dynamics, see Grace T. Leksana, Memory Culture of the Anti-Leftist Violence in Indonesia. Embedded Remembering (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023).

6. Edward Aspinall and Greg Fealy, “Introduction: Soeharto’s New Order and its Legacy,” in Edward Aspinall and Greg Feal (eds) Soeharto’s New Order and Its Legacy (Canberra: ANU Press, 2010), 1–14.

7. A few years later, about 600 wives and children of prisoners were forcibly transferred to Buru as part of the Transmigrasi program. Koalisi Keadilan dan Pengungkapan Kebenaran [Coalition for Justice and the Disclosure of Truth] Menemukan Kembali Indonesia: Memahami Empat Puluh Tahun Kekerasan demi Memutus Rantai Impunitas.[Redefining Indonesia: Survivors’ Voices Breaking the Chains of the Violent Past] (Jakarta: KKPK 2014), 90.

8. Ariel Heryanto examined how Suharto’s regime built politics of history and memory in his several publications. See, for instance, Ariel Heryanto, State Terrorism and Political Identity in Indonesia. Fatally belonging (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).

9. Katharine McGregor, History in Uniform. Military Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia’s Past (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007).

10. In my considerations about necroviolence and necropolitics, I have adopted several political and philosophical theories that I find applicable to Indonesia, despite their origin from different political contexts, being careful not to confuse ‘wide applicability’ and ‘universality’ (see C. Douglas Lummis, “Political theory: why it seems universal, but isn’t really”. Futures, 34(1)(2020): 63–73). Among them, I draw from Achille Mbembe, the Cameroonian philosopher known for his writings on colonialism and its consequences; the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer, also using the concept of biopolitics (developed from the work of Michel Foucault.) in many of his works. I incorporate Hannah Arendt’s insights, a German-American historian and philosopher, examining the relationship between power and evil in politics, authority, and totalitarianism. Moreover, I recall Jason De León’s research, an American anthropologist, revealing the suffering and death of immigrants as a consequence of the necroviolent politics of migration in the United States. Also, I draw heavily on the concept of the dead body by Polish historian Ewa Domanska, who often revisits the human condition in extreme and borderline situations.

11. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

12. Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015).

13. Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019), 92.

14. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968).

15. Ewa Domańska, Nekros. Wprowadzenie do Ontologii Martwego Ciała [Necros: An Introduction to the Ontology of Human Dead Body] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2017).

16. Ibidem.

17. Ewa Domańska, “Toward the Archaeontology of the Dead Body,” Rethinking History 9(4) (2005): 389–413, 398.

18. Ewa Domańska, Nekros, 105.

19. Mike Parker Pearson, “The Powerful Dead: Archaeological Relationships between the Living and the Dead,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3(2) (2013): 203–229.

20. Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves

21. The Buru camps were not death camps but forced labour camps. However, in the case of former prisoners who were my respondents during the research on Buru in 2018–2019, their daily life in the camps was marked by constant fear of losing their lives at the hands of a guard. Similarly, many fears and concerns about health and life can be found in the memories written by prisoners, including, for example, one of the most known Hersri Setiawan’s Buru Island: A Prison Memoir (Victoria: Monash University Publishing, 2020).

22. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

23. The most known former tapols’ memories are Mia Bustam, Dari Kamp Ke Kamp: Cerita Seorang Perempuan [From Camp to Camp: A Woman’s Story]. Adi Prasetyo S (ed), (Jakarta: Spasi&amp, 2008); Hersri Setiawan, Buru Island: A Prison Memoir (Victoria: Monash University Publishing, 2020); Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy: A Memoir (New York: Hyperion, 1999).

24. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (London: University of California Press 2001), 104.

25. According to Ariel Heryanto, Suharto relied on five sources to establish and maintain his legitimacy: nationalism, Pancasila, the 1945 constitution and its formal implementation, programs of development, and propaganda about stability and order, see Ariel Heryanto, “The Cultural Aspect of State and Society, Introduction,” in Arief Budiman (ed.) State and Civil Society in Indonesia, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia 22(1990), 289–300.

26. Benedict Anderson, “How Did the Generals Die,” Indonesia, Vol. 043, April (1987): 109–134.

27. Saskia Wieringa and Nursyahbani Katjasungkana.

28. Ewa Domańska, “Toward the Archaeontology of the Dead Body,” 389.

29. Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

30. Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (Columbia University Press, 1996/1998)

31. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

32. Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (New York: Penguin, 2003).

33. Robert Cribb, “Unresolved problems in the Indonesian killings of 1965–1966,” Asian Survey 42(4) (2002): 550–563.

34. Katharine McGregor, “Mass Graves and Memories of the 1965 Indonesian Killings,” in Douglas Kammen and Katharine McGregor (eds), The Contours of Mass Violence in Indonesia 1965–68 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012), 234–263.

35. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (1st ed) (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

36. Jonathan Kessler, “Indonesia’s Tropical Gulag,” Index on Censorship 7(5) (1978): 22–29.

37. Carmen Budiardjo, Surviving Indonesia’s Gulag: A Western Woman Tells Her Story (London: Cassell, 1996).

38. Many images of industrialisation and logistics organisation of camp life can be found in the memoirs written by former prisoners, including, for example, Hersri Setiawan, Diburu di Pulau Buru, (Yogyakarta: Galang Press, 2006); Hersri Setiawan, Kamus Gestok (Yogyakarta: Galang Press, 2003); Hersri Setiawan, Aku Eks-Tapol (Yogyakarta: Galang Press, 2003); Mars Noersmono, Bertahan Hidup di Pulau Buru (Bandung: Ultimus, 2017); Achmadi Moestahal, Dari Gontor Ke Pulau Buru: Memoar H Achmadi Moestahal (Yogyakarta: Syarikat, 2002); Suparman, Sebuah Catatan Tragedi 1965: Dari Pulau Buru Sampai Ke Mekah (Bandung: Penerbit Nuansa, 2006), D. S. Moeljono (Pembuangan Pulau Buru. Dari Barter ke Hukum Pasar (Bandung: Ultimus, 2017).

39. The semantics used by the regime are precisely described by John Roosa, Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965–1966 in Indonesia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) and Saskia Wieringa and Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Propaganda and the genocide in Indonesia. Imagined evil (London: Routledge, 2018).

40. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

41. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1998.

42. The army’s purpose was to show that the group that had to be destroyed was coherent and had its own structure, beliefs and goals. The army called its members traitors (pengkhianat), savages (biadab), devils (iblis) and dogs (asu), wild animals (hewan ganai), and women were often called whores (pelacur). This effectively discouraged society from opposing the murders committed. See Jess Melvin, The army and the Indonesian genocide. Mechanics of mass murder (London-New York: Routledge, 2018).

43. Julie Southwood and Patrick Flanagan, Indonesia: Law, Propaganda and Terror (London: Zed Press, 1983), 85.

44. Robert Elson, “In Fear of the People: Suharto and the Justification of State-Sponsored Violence under the New Order,” in Freek Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad (eds), Roots of Violence in Indonesia. Its Historical Roots and Its Contemporary Manifestations (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002, 173–195), 174.

45. Soe Tjen Marching, The End of Silence. Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 17.

46. The images of camps are derived from former prisoners who were my respondents during my research stay on Buru Island in 2018–2019 and coincide with the published memoirs of former prisoners.

47. “Setiap Orang Merasa Ketakutan,” in T. W. Baskara et al., Suara di Balik Prahara. Berbagi Narasi tentang Tragedi ’65 (Jakarta: Galang Press, 2011), 231.

48. During my conversations with former prisoners on Buru Island, Savanajaya, in August 2019, they frequently stressed this bitter and ironic summary.

49. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, The Mute’s Soliloquy:.

50. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

51. Ibidem, 302.

52. Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics.

53. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 113.

54. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press, 1982), 38.

55. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2005).

56. Daniel Feierstein, “Beyond the Binary Model National Security Doctrine in Argentina as a Way of Rethinking Genocide as a Social Practice,” in Alexander Laban Hinton, Thomas La Pointe and Irvin-Erickson Douglas (eds), Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory (New Brunswick, New Jersey, London: Rutgers University Press, 2014, 68–82), 72.

57. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 24.

58. Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 104.

62. Abidin Kusno, Di Balik Pascakolonial: Arsitektur, ruang kota dan budaya politik di Indonesia (Surabaya: Airlangga University Press, 2006).

63. Hilmar Farid, “Indonesia’s Original Sins: Mass Killings and Capitalist Expansion, 1965–66,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6(1) (2005): 3–16.

64. Ali Moertopo, “The Floating Mass,” in David Bourchier and Verdi R. Hadiz (eds) Indonesian Politics and Society: A Reader (London, New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 45–49.

65. Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 2–3.

66. Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics.

67. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, New York: Routledge, 1984).

68. Mike Parker Pearson, “Mortuary Practices, Society and Ideology: An Ethnoarchaeological Study,” in Ian Hodder (ed) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 99–113.

69. Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves.

70. Annie Pohlman, “No Place to Remember: Haunting and the Search for Mass Graves in Indonesia,” in Amy L. Hubbell, Natsuko Akagawa, Sol Rojas-Lizana and Annie Pohlman (eds) Places of Traumatic Memory: A Global Context (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 61–82.

71. Katharine McGregor, ”Mass Graves and Memories of the 1965 Indonesian Killings”.

72. Yayasan Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan 1965/66 [Research Foundation for Victims of the 1965–1966 Killings], ‘Kuburan Massal Penggarit Tak Boleh Hilang’ [The Mass Grave in Penggarit Can’t Disappear], www.ypkp1965.org/blog/2019/08/28/kuburan-massal-penggarit-tak-boleh-hilang/ (accessed April 15, 2020).

73. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre in Poland under Grant [2019/33/N/HS2/02270].

Notes on contributors

Katarzyna Marta Głąb

Katarzyna Marta Głąb is a researcher at SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, KITLV, Leiden. Her project, funded by the National Science Centre in Poland, focuses on cultural memory in Indonesia related to the mass murders of 1965-1966. For her research, in 2019, she was awarded the Emerging Scholar Prize in the field of genocide studies by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS).