The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Asia-Pacific, Culture, Politics, and Society) - Softcover

Kusno, Abidin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822346478 ISBN 13: 9780822346470

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

In The Appearances of Memory, the Indonesian architectural and urban historian Abidin Kusno explores the connections between the built environment and political consciousness in Indonesia during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Focusing primarily on Jakarta, he describes how perceptions of the past, anxieties about the rapid pace of change in the present, and hopes for the future have been embodied in architecture and urban space at different historical moments. He argues that the built environment serves as a reminder of the practices of the past and an instantiation of the desire to remake oneself within, as well as beyond, one's particular time and place.

Addressing developments in Indonesia since the fall of President Suharto's regime in 1998, Kusno delves into such topics as the domestication of traumatic violence and the restoration of order in the urban space, the intense interest in urban history in contemporary Indonesia, and the implications of "superblocks," large urban complexes consisting of residences, offices, shops, and entertainment venues. Moving farther back in time, he examines how Indonesian architects reinvented colonial architectural styles to challenge the political culture of the state, how colonial structures such as railway and commercial buildings created a new, politically charged cognitive map of cities in Java in the early twentieth century, and how the Dutch, in attempting to quell dissent, imposed a distinctive urban visual order in the 1930s. Finally, the present and the past meet in his long-term considerations of how Java has responded to the global flow of Islamic architecture, and how the meanings of Indonesian gatehouses have changed and persisted over time. The Appearances of Memory is a pioneering look at the roles of architecture and urban development in Indonesia's ongoing efforts to move forward.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Abidin Kusno is Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian Research and Faculty Associate of the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at the University of British Columbia, where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture. He is the author of Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures in Indonesia.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

""The Appearances of Memory "offers fresh perspectives and intriguing analyses of the political culture of Indonesia as expressed through architecture, development, spatial relationships, and other facets of urban development in the colonial and national periods. It is further evidence of Abidin Kusno's unique capacity to probe the inner life of Indonesia's distinct political culture and to connect it to the structures that give it meaning."--Christopher Silver, author of "Planning the Megacity: Jakarta in the Twentieth Century"

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THE APPEARANCES OF MEMORY

Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in IndonesiaBy Abidin Kusno

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2010 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4647-0

Contents

Illustrations.............................................................................................................xiiiAcknowledgments...........................................................................................................1GOVERNMENTALITY...........................................................................................................25CHAPTER 1 Whither Nationalist Urbanism? Public Life in Governor Sutiyoso's Jakarta.......................................49CHAPTER 2 The Regime, the Busway, and the Construction of Urban Subjects in an Indonesian Metropolis.....................71REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING................................................................................................101CHAPTER 4 Glodok on Our Minds: Chinese Culture and the Forgetting of the May Riots.......................................125REMINISCENCES.............................................................................................................155CHAPTER 6 Colonial Cities in Motion: Urban Symbolism and Popular Radicalism..............................................182MENTAL NEBULAE............................................................................................................203CHAPTER 8 "The Reality of One-Which-Is-Two": Java's Reception of Global Islam............................................223CHAPTER 9 Guardian of Memories: The Gardu in Urban Java..................................................................279Notes.....................................................................................................................313Bibliography..............................................................................................................327

Chapter One

WHITHER NATIONALIST URBANISM? Public Life in Governor Sutiyoso's Jakarta

Beginning is not only a kind of action; it is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness ... beginning is making or producing difference. -EDWARD SAID, BEGINNINGS: INTENTION AND METHOD

Since independence, Jakarta has loomed large as a powerful place in the Indonesian imagination. The significance of this city derives from the fact that it has been produced and reproduced over time, largely through state policies, as a space of power in terms of the concentration of capital exchange, political authority, and cultural assets. The most important sources of the city's power, however, are discourses of national prestige through which the political elites of the country produce Jakarta as a city of influence. By insisting that the nation needs all its development, infrastructure, and monuments in one place, they transform the physical spaces of the city. If a kampung (poor urban neighborhood) has to be demolished and the master plan changed, the further development of the nation provides sufficient justification. This-what I would call "nationalist urbanism"-aims at providing a unifying image of Jakarta as the center that represents the nation for citizens living in the city (as well as elsewhere in the country). Out of this ideology, the coexistence of two seemingly contradictory sets of relationships emerged during the reign of President Suharto (1966-98). On the one hand, there is a familiar Western economic liberalization (dictated by the International Monetary Fund) implemented through the discourses of development. On the other hand, there is the nationalist discourse of power centered on the authority of Jakarta. The difference between these two discourses does not add up to an opposition between economics and culture, or the global and the local. Instead, they coexist, and it is this coexistence that has made Jakarta a city of power and influence. As inhabitants of the capital city, the residents of Jakarta thus live city life as much as national life. Living in Jakarta, one thinks of oneself as experiencing a cosmopolitan globalscape, and yet as a citizen of Indonesia, one also consequently lives in deference to the authority of national discourses.

The riots of May 1998, which toppled the rule of President Suharto, have changed the lives of many people in Jakarta. To the amazement of the people, the powerful, relatively stable and repressive regime of Suharto was dismantled in just a few days by what seemed to be forces from below. The majority of the city populace had never seen in their lifetime how large-scale protests, demonstrations, and the physical destruction of the built environment could contribute to the overthrowing of an authoritarian regime. The damage that was done to the city and its inhabitants during the riots, however, was also deep and of lasting consequence. The riots and the spectacle of reformasi (a rallying word that accompanied the overthrown of Suharto) have profoundly changed the sensitivity of Jakarta's residents toward the nation and the governance of the city. They have also shown that people have the right to the city and that, as one resident put it, "people rejected spaces that have been created in the city."

The collapse of Suharto's New Order has finally brought down the framework of "nationalist urbanism" with which the state's elites have been playing since independence. The residents of Jakarta, from various classes, found themselves in a more advantageous position to criticize developmental projects in the city that seek to represent the image of the nation. More importantly, unlike in the past, Jakarta's inhabitants now know that their protests over city administration and planning will not easily be put down by using the apparatus of violence. This chapter tells one such story that unfolded in Jakarta during the few years after the collapse of the Suharto regime. It deals with the attempts of the authority of Jakarta to recreate another round of "nationalist urbanism" as the city witnessed the decline of its political and economic power. It considers the spatial effects of the city government's attempts to revive the image of the city by initiating the "nationalist urbanism" of the previous regimes and considers the critical responses of the public.

In this sense, this chapter deals with the politics of memory. It shows how Jakarta has been engaged in an unprecedented politics of memory that, on the one hand, involves the remembering of the city as the beacon of the nation and, on the other, the forgetting of national consciousness as the formation of city power. "Memory" in this chapter is thus not just a term referring to the state of the human mind concretely remembering and forgetting the past. Instead, it also refers, more abstractly, to the ways in which the past, consciously or unconsciously, structures how one lives the present. It concerns how a particular past continues to live on as traces of the normalized present while other memories are forgotten or return only to haunt the sense of that normality constructed in the aftermath of 1998. What is thus important is not what has been forgotten and remembered, but how and why certain memories are institutionalized, transformed, and invested with particular meaning for the reregulation of the public. The public, however, can, in turn, open these same memories for appropriation, contestation, and intervention. To account for both the condition underlying current urban change in Jakarta and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822346478
• ISBN 13: 9780822346470
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 350
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar