Jakarta (fear of the street, part 1)

President Sukarno Addressing May Day Rally 5/7/1965-Djakarta, Indonesia- President Sukarno of Indonesia addresses a mass May Day rally in the Sports Hall Building. Sukarno announced his decision not to attend a peace conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Rahman in Tokyo. The announcement was viewed as a victory for Indonesia’s powerful Communist Party. Posters above the silent crowd stress the unity of the working classes in their struggle to overcome “imperialism.”
Image: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Date Photographed: May 7, 1965

see: kaskus

Reading further into Abidon Kusno’s book Behind the Postcolonial: Arctitecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia is both interesting and enlightening.

All cities have their aspects of violence. American cities have long been associated with violence. Gang warfare, the drug trade, and poverty, domestic violence, random shootings fills the news here in a regular cycle. But Jakarta being Jakarta fear of the street has its own particular aspect.

What follows is a review, of sorts, from Chapter Four, which Kusno has titled:

 The Violence of Categories: Urban Space and the Making of the National Subject

Let us again begin with Sukarno. The sub-chapter headings are from Kusno.

THE CITY, THE SUPREME LEADER AND THE EMBODIMENT OF THE NATIONAL SUBJECT

“My friends and my children, I am no Communist… I am not prejudiced. I am no dictator. I am no holy man or reincarnation of God. I am just an ordinary human being like you and you and you… Why is it that people ask me to give a speech to them, even when the sun is at its hottest? The answer is this: What Bung (brother) Karno says is actually written in the hearts of the Indonesian people. The people want to hear their own voice but… they cannot speak eloquently for themselves… (Therefore) when I die… do not write on the tombstone: ‘Here rests His Most Exalted Excellency Dr. Ir. Raden Sukarno, the first President of the Republic of Indonesia’ … [but] write… ‘Here rests Bung Karno, the Tongue of the Indonesian People”.

-Sukarno, 1959

“In every Seventeenth of August meeting [Independence Day] … it is as though I held a dialogue. A dialogue with the people of Indonesia. A two-way conversation with Sukarno-the-man and Sukarno-the people, a two-way conversation between comrade in arms and comrade in arms. A two-way conversation between two comrades who in reality are one. That is why, every time I prepare a Seventeenth of August address I become like a person possessed”.

-Sukarno, 1963

Kusno suggests that the results of political experimentation in the decade of the 1950s ultimately ended in social and political unrest threatening Indonesia’s national unity and national economy. Sukarno’s response was to initiate “guided democracy” based on the leadership of his personal authority. Sukarno’s reasoning was that the troubles which beset Indonesia were the outcome of the politics of the “looseness” of the center. Indonesia “should become whole again, that the state become whole again”, as Sukarno stated.

Kusno argues that in order for Sukarno to achieve this end that, “…it appeared important for Sukarno to find a way to communicate with the whole population, and to convince them that he, the leader, is not merely representing “them” as the head of state, but he actually is them…” and that, “Sukarno, as the “extension of the tongue of the people” is also “Sukarno the people.” This political representation demanded that Sukarno embody the people himself as a way to communicate with them. As a result, “populist politics” was initiated, a policy which demanded the constant mobilization of the crowds on the principal streets of the capital city (emphasis mine). In this period of populist politics, in the first quarter of the 1960s, the city of Jakarta became a symbolic representation of state power”.

As illustrated in the Sukarno quotes in the previous posting Sukarno then began his program to rebuild the central part of Jakarta with monuments, a department store, a convention center, a stadium, and grand boulevards. Jakarta, certainly the idea of Jakarta, was linked to nation building. Jakarta was the stage of populist politics and high performances. Acted out by Sukarno this was the appeal to “the street”.

Kusno again: “In this train of subjective thought, the Parliament House, the people’s Republic of Indonesia, and Sukarno, the megalomanic architect, are all interchangeable, each one representing the other. The imagined Parliament House was to be a building that would capture the voices of the 105 million people in the country in which he could better hear them and also speak with them. Sukarno represents the people, and the people are represented by the buildings and the city he created. Through the city, a singular collective national body was created. It is from this early official affinity between the city and the nation that as Toer wrote in 1955, one begins to feel that “one cannot be fully Indonesian until one has seen Jakarta”. Once one identifies with the nation’s capital, one is an Indonesian.”

1965 would be the breaking point. The bother (bung) was overthrown and the father (pak) would take his place.

THE SCENE OF THE STREET: THE STATE OF NEW ORDER AND THE PATHOLOGICAL COLLECTIVE SUBJECT

“Before” appears as a time of chaos, with men and women angrily gesticulating and debating. Then Suharto takes control - the symbol of reason and harmony. “After” shows people quietly going about their business, under the protective eye of the military.

(Abeyasekere 1987)

Kusno begins, “Perhaps it was in relation to this extraordinary attempt to produce a single abstract body of the nation that, when Suharto took power from Sukarno in 1966, he ended this era of populist politics. His regime, officially named as the New Order, legitimized itself by “decapitating” the supreme leader, disembodying the single collective body of Sukarno and turning the revolutionary street into a space of discipline and fear”.

This New Order begins with the massacre of perhaps as many as half a million Indonesians. The New Order characterizes politics of the Sukarno era as one of chaos, communism, and a danger to the stability of the state. As a result, Kusno notes, “the space of the street, the locus of Sukarno’s revolution, has been turned into the site of “disturbance”. It became a “dangerous” place which, in the name of national security, demanded constant anticipation from the government. With the end of populist politics, Sukarno’s revolutionary subject was decapitated and the street, where they used to parade, was criminalized”.

The example Kusno gives of the New Order’s politics of the street comes from acts of state terrorism which took place in the early 1980s.

By the early 1980s the New Order was busying itself with “producing a new generation of “modern” Indonesian”: elevated highways, office towers, “dream homes” in the suburbs. But what was to come came as a shock and so it was intended.

Kusno: “During this period, urbanites began to find the corpses of tattooed men known as “gali” on the streets. “Gali” were mostly petty criminals and members of gangs. To ensure the winning of the 1982 election, the government hired many of these people. When they were no longer needed, the shooting began. The “gali” were killed and their bodies left in the streets as public spectacle. This state-sponsored operation became known as the case of “Petrus-Penembak Misterius” (mysterious shooter) and “Matius-Mayat Misterius” (mysterious corpse)”.

The names, as Kusno points out are the names of Catholic Saints, Saint Peter (”Petrus”) and Saint Matthew (”Matius”) and refer to the “powerful presence of Catholic officers and civilians in Indonesia’s security apparatus that were sent to “discipline” the Catholic province of East Timor”.  The techniques of terror and social control used in the Indonesian war against East Timor after it was “pacified” were transposed other localities through Indonesia including Jakarta.

Kusno: “…this technique of violence was soon integrated into the national pedagogy. To the incident of “Petrus” and “Matius”, it was reported that President Suharto, after the operation, was proudly fascinated by the technique that “…the corpses were left where they were, just like that“. For him “this was for ’shock therapy’ (in English). This therapy, as James Siegel points out, is meant to shock in order to cure, and is directed not at criminals but at the general populace. The corpses were left in the streets, Suharto continues, “so that the crowds (’organg banyak’) would understand that, faced with criminals, there [are] (sic) still some who would act and would control them“.

“What is extraordinary in this statement is the way the state makes its appearance on the street through the dead bodies of those considered as “criminal”. Through the display of the murder victims, viewers see the state, and acknowledge its presence. This “theatrical representation of pain” in which the power of the state was inscribed in the visible flesh of the condemned serve to discipline and normalize the well-being of the general populace. However, the corpses, instead of scaring people away, as Siegel reports, “became attractions not only to newspapers readers but to people on the streets where the bodies were distributed”. Through this display of violence towards the underclass, collective identities were constituted (empasis mine). The dead body is the message sent by the state to the “underclass”, who are seen as potential criminals, as a way of communicating with them. The message, however, also addresses the upper class, which fear that they are not distinguishable from “criminals”. This method of “criminalizing” the street makes the corpses on the street a sign of menace provoking, as a result, as Siegel indicates, a fear among the general populace not merely towards the “gali”, but the possibility of them to be like the “gali”. This displacement of the street creates a collective body of the populace whose identity is contructed through a retreat from it (emphasis mine).”

 As my wife would say, “Just wow”.  I had been mulling these ideas over for some time. When I finally got to Kusno’s book I was blown away. There is more to come…

I have quoted Kusno at length here in this post.  His analysis is spot on and serves to set up the second part of this review (which I hope to post soon) which will address the economic crisis and the Jakarta riots of 1997-1998 in context of the urban poor, the urban intellectuals, the urban middle class and the state elite to further explore the idea of  ”fear of the street”.