Jakarta (fear of the street, part 2)

Taman Anggrek, Jakarta 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

West Jakarta

 

I have left Jakarta. Three weeks of eating the Jakarta air and being saturated with advertising (promising much but delivering little) has been interesting to say the least.  But just in time anyway for MENTAL DETOX WEEK.

At my family’s house, just outside of Depok, TelKom Indonesia, has been out of order for the last six days. I had internet access on one of those six days.  But as my family says (almost in a chorus) “well, you know, that’s Indonesia”.

I have come away with over 500 photographs and 17 short videos.  Some of those, after I process it all (both mentally and physically) will filter down into the future postings of Jakarta Urban Blog. That in itself is worth returning for, yes?

In the meantime I have a layover in Seoul, Korea. Here there is high speed internet 24/7. It is free. But, alas it is not Jakarta.  

In any event to keep myself occupied I am posting the second part of my review of Chapter Four: The Violence of Categories: Urban Space and the Making of the National Subject in Abidin Kusno’s book Behind the Post-Colonial: Architecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia.

THE PROTECTING EYES OF THE FATHER, THE DEATH OF THE STREET, AND THE BIRTH OF THE NATIONAL FAMILY

Kusno: “The New Order of Suharto, however, did not legitimize its presence by merely fabricating the threat of “internal” others, initiating the danger of the street and providing security measures. Instead, a second point of tensions associated with a desire to form a new collective subject that represented “modernity” complicated these techniques of social control through the heavy-handed display of power and the spectacle of punishment”.

In 1974 the first student protests, demonstration, and urban youth riots occurred. The regime was beset not only with attempting to bridge the rapidly widening gap between the rich and the poor but also to satisfy demands for upward mobility.

Here again Jakarta would be used as a “symbol of the nation” but not to instill a national or revolutionary spirit as that of the Sukarno generation. This time it would be used to form, as Kusno states “national subjects who were both obedient and “modern”. Suharto’s style was to “guide from behind” like an ever-watchful parent. He is the “smiling general” representing the ideology of “development”. This idea as Kusno states “had its sense of authentic Javanese wisdom in which the children of the family are guided from behind to their destined place. The lesson has been that they know their place, do not get lost, or go astray”.

And here is what happens.

Kuson: “This task, of preventing national subjects from going astray, was perhaps first practiced by the famous Governor of Jakarta, Ali Sadikin, a Sukarno protégé who also worked under Suharto from 1966-1977. From the beginning of his administration, Sadikin found himself dealing with what he came to perceive as the problem of “urban excess”, namely, the migration of people who lacked “urban rationality” to the capital city. Under his tenure, Jakarta was given the title of “metropolitan” and “modernity” was defined in relation to the spaces occupied by the urban poor who were then subjected to the strong arm of the law”.

Here is Sadikin’s twisted logic, “The execution of law enforcement is homage to the poor people (‘rakyat kecil’). They are those with no skill, who are lacking consciousness of the law, who build their houses along riverbanks, along railways, under electric poles, along the green belt, those who sleep under bridges or in the park, or use pedestrian ways and streets for vending, those who ride ‘becak‘ (pedicab).”

The urban problems Sadikin lists are still present today in Jakarta but his war on the becak was a success. Becak, nearly synonymous with Jakarta and Indonesia, were confiscated under force, gathered up, and dumped into the ocean.

Kusno cites Sadikin, “This form of transportation, used by the poor, was too slow for “the economy (which) should move faster” and furthermore, “it is hard to administer, and the leadership simply does not want rustic-looking people pushing bikes around in their capital city”.

Kusno: “Here the memories of the populist politics of the previous regimes and the social environment of the poor became interchangeable. Both became “non-modern” elements in the city. For Sadikin, the capital of the nation must be represented as modern so that “potential troubles” embedded on the streets and in environments constructed as “non-modern”, could be suppressed, eliminated, and transformed”.

FLYING OVER THE KAMPUNG: CLASSIFYING NATIONAL SUBJECTS

Kusno: “Central to the state’s concern about discipline and order in the city, therefore, are the overlapping interests between the government’s promotion of its ideology of “development” on the one hand and the increasing numbers of the new generation of New Order “middle class”, for want of a better word, concerned with their identity, on the other. Here elevated highways occupy a special position, not least because of their “visibility”, like a giant roller coaster stretching over the capital city. The elevated highways are not just a means for de-congesting metropolitan Jakarta; they are also a sign of progress for developmentalist regime that measures its achievement through the way the city is represented…

Driving through the elevated highways suggests an experience of flying over the top of the city, escaping from its congested roads and leaving behind the “lower” classes who are routed through the crowded street at ground level. From this suspended driveway, the details of the urban fabric of Jakarta’s streets and kampung, the poor urban neighborhoods, are transformed into a series of blurred images, giving a sense of detachment from the “worldly” place below. The elevated highway is thus a system of representation that allows some forms and spaces to be visualized and others to be concealed. It is a kind of fluency provided by the city to create a dream-state of upward mobility in order to overcome the contradictions of “development”…

…this infrastructure is not merely a representation of the dominant class. It also helps to constitute the general populace by way of city buses that occasionally travel on the elevated highways. On these occasions, the relatively poor urbanites are also provided with a similar new experience of the city, but with different political implications. Here urban space is constructed to define and regulate both the privileged and the poor. They are both celebrated and constituted by the urban infrastructure, constructed to assemble crowds for uplifting purposes…

…This emphasis on the centrality of vision in architecture and urban space constitutes a phantasmagoria of display of the achievement of the New Order in embracing commodity capitalism. Along with the highway net work, it reaches its apogee in the design of department stores, high-rise office towers and real estate housing, all of which are seen to provide a field of vision available for the well-to-do. On the other side, the majority of the poor that live behind this façade, surrounded by images of a metropolis, are conditioned by the visible proof of “historical progress”. From pleasure, alienation and wonder that are derived from spectacle alone a society of consumption is produced (emphasis mine)”.

 

There is a punch line to this which I will attempt to deliver in Jakarta (fear of the street, part 3)…

 

 

 

 

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”.

 

Jakarta (assignment)

 

 Photo by Osocio

This morning as I was reading through the news I came across the two articles below published by Xinhua News.  I have posted each of the articles here in full. Both articles appear to be wire stories orignating from The Jakarta Post.

Jakarta is always mentioned and written about as a city of contrasts.

 Violence against women rises in Indonesia …>go to site

 JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) — Violence against women in Indonesia has steadily increased after nearly a decade of political reform, the Jakarta Post quoted the National Commission for Women’s Protection as saying here Saturday.

State institutions both in central and regional governments were among the main perpetrators through their discriminatory regulations, the report said.

Violence has increased despite the fact that the government has enacted 10 laws and signed three regional treaties to eliminate all forms of violence against women.

In a report on the state of women’s protection issued in conjunction with tje International Women’s Day, the commission highlighted 27 regional bylaws which it says discriminate against women, either through the criminalization of women or seeking to control women’s bodies.

“For example, there’s a regulation that forbids women from going out at night or others that determine how women should dress,” commissioner Arimbi Heroepoetri said.

She said that under these regulations women could easily be labeled, and punished, as “immoral” women simply because they went home late at night or wore tight clothes.

Tangerang municipality near Jakarta last year issued an ordinance banning women from going outside of their homes after 10p.m.

According to Arimbi, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of domestic violence reported thanks to the law, which categorizes all acts of violence against women as criminal.

She said the sharpest increase in the number of reported cases of domestic violence occurred in 2005, with 16,615 reported cases, or almost four times the 4,310 cases reported in 2004.

The second article is: 

5 Indonesians on Forbes’ list of richest …>go to site

JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) — Five Indonesian businessmen are among the 1,125 wealthiest people in the world listed by Forbes magazine.

The 58-year-old Sukanto Tanoto, owner of the Raja Garuda Mas group, is ranked 284th on the list with estimated assets of some 3.8 billion U.S. dollars, local English newspaper the Jakarta Post reported on Saturday.

Raja Garuda Mas group and its subsidiaries operate in a range of industries, including pulp and paper, palm oil plantations and construction.

Also on the Forbes list are Michael Hartono and Budi Hartono, owners of tobacco company PT Djarum. Their fortunes were estimatedat 2 billion dollars each.

Other Indonesians to make the list are Martua Sitorus, the owner of palm oil producer Wilmar International Holding, who is ranked at 652nd with 1.9 billion dollars, and Peter Sondakh, the owner of Rajawali Group, at 962nd with 1.2 billion dollars.

This year’s list includes 1,125 people with a total net worth of 4.4 trillion dollars.

There are 211 Asians on this year’s Forbes list, up from 160 the previous year. Apart from the five Indonesians, India has 53 people on the list, including four in the top 10, the Chinese Mainland has 42, China’s Hong Kong has 26 and Japan has 27.

Your assignment is to think of how and in what ways these two articles are connected.

Jakarta (megalopolis)

 Photo by mizsz

 Review

Jakarta Megalopolis: Horizontal and Vertical Observations

Arjan van Helmond and Stani Michiels, Valiz Publishers, 2007, 179 pages.

What were we doing? Now I remember, we were headed to Gambir Station to buy tickets to Perwokerto and then after that just burning time before we had to take the new Toyota van my wife’s brother had just purchased back to his house in Depok and meet him there after he was finished working for the day.

It must be a tradition in Indonesia that when you purchase a new vehicle the first thing you do is loan it out to family member.

So then, it was Budi, the husband of my wife’ sister, and I, with the new van, heading out from Citayam on an early sunny morning and headed into Jakarta for the day. We drove out of the neighborhood and onto the main street winding past shops, stores, and businesses packed to the very edge of both sides of the road and which seemed to stretch away like an endless film loop, then on past the Citayam train depot bottleneck, on through Depok, and then finally taking the back roads all the way into Jakarta.

By this time I had been to Jakarta so many times that I had lost count but with out doubt on every occasion there seemed to be a new way to go and new things to see. This day was no different. Budi was taking me on the maximum tour. Down streets I never knew existed, past apartment complexes, malls, embassies, cemeteries, monuments, and a lake where he said he had once seen monkeys. “But maybe no more“, he added. I really liked the notion that there was a lake with monkeys. I filed that away in my head where the idea has rooted into a life of its own to this day.

Jakarta - Lake - Monkeys

Just like that.

Budi clearly knew what he was doing and where he was going. He only mentioned once or twice, out of sincere humility, that he was lost as a result of on the spur of the moment experimenting with a new shortcut. Still, we were back in good order in a snap.

I was there for the ride and the pleasure of watching Jakarta float by my window. But I wondered how he knew where he was going and where we were.

“Budi, how do you know where we are and where we are going?”

“When I first moved to Jakarta I just drove around and around the city day after day”.

Budi had, through time, experience, and experiment created in his head a mental map of Jakarta. He could not survive there with out it. He had made place out of Jakarta’s urban space. He had worked up his own internal geography.

Whether I realized it or not this is what I was also doing. Through most of our day I had no landmark I could anchor myself to in the warren of Jakarta’s densely complex streets punctuated by crazy intersections where no pedestrian would dare to tread, until I saw, in the long distance, hovering in the sky like a signal, the National Monument. I knew then Gambir Station was not far off.

I think it was at that time that Jakarta started to click in my mind

There is an occasional moment or two during the day when all this comes back to me. Out of the murk it comes to the surface like a fish in a pond and rolls its back once or twice. There I am magically arriving at Gambir Station or stuck in the jammed traffic around Blok M or picking out the landmarks heading back Citayam, home, the mosque across the street, the beautiful faces of the children returning from school.

How do you know Jakarta?

 the review is continued here …> go to page