Part 1:

I was sitting in one of the new NS trains when sirens began to screech and sing. They orchestrated at the brakes' acceleration, halting and yeilding. Hundreds of people climbed in through it’s doors and I recorded a song. I mixed in some vocals to make a new story, one that underpinned the internal conflications of mutating -isms.

What is neocolonialism? What is neoliberalism? What is white liberalism? What is late-capitalism? What is neo-imperialism? What is Taylor Swift doing?

They never messaged me back after that

Part 2: A Reflection Buffet, a re-course that’ll take the same duration of you eating a meal just to read.

Keywords: Intersections, narratives, local and global forms of self-representation

Recent reading: Transnational Discourses and Circuits of Queer Knowledge In Indonesia. A lot of these reflections are well-digested thoughts and late-night ruminations that stem from this essay.

Summary : Author Evelyn Blackwood interviews several members of the LGBTQ+ community in Indonesia, specifically lesbi, tomboi, and waria candidates living and working in Indonesia. Each interview gives you a an image of these social dynamics, their relationship with friends and family, their roles in their communities and experiences as a small minority in West Sumatra that have informed their self-representation. A central point of this article is about the terms we use, invent and adopt to self-identify, and although these terms are common, how each individual infuses their own social fabric into it’s meaning.

(lesbi, tomboi and warias are terms that are widely used in Indonesia and belonging to the umbrella of LGBTQ. The article considers the distinct differences and chracteristics through interviews. Meaning and context differ between discourses happening in Padang or Jakarta for example. I reccommend the reading if you’re interested. If you’d like a PDF copy contact my email here.)

Blackwood begins the article:

“Global lesbian and gay liberation discourse contains within it progressive narratives of the development of modern sexual identities. Activist lesbian discourse in particular holds the expectation that modern lesbian subjects will express a self- consciousness or awareness of sexual identity as “lesbians” and “women.” The intersections of global, activist discourses and individual subjectivities, however, are much more complex and layered than such a narrative suggests.” (Pg. 1)

Lately, I’d been getting fatigued with constantly translating and preserving narratives, siwtch up from Indonesian to Dutch paradigms. Western frameworks have a lot of dominion over individual or collective representation and it’s constantly taken for granted, loosely forgotten or simply minimized on a day to day basis. There is strangely a reusable neoliberal model seemingly dictating the conversation, echoing through us from different mediaconsoles: “Oh everyone’s on their phones these days!”, “Recycling is good for the environment!” or “You gotta love yourself before loving someone else!”. But these words feel stagnant of time, meaning and nuance. Do they really answer to what we face today in late-stage capitalism or are they just empty rhetorics? I wanted to highlight a passage below that I felt resonated with this tandem on a smaller and more intimate queer context. An account described by Blackwood’s research associate in 2004 at a KPI (Indonesian Women’s Coalition) Jakarta conference depicts an interaction with one of the leaders of a small LGBT Padang branch, Dedi, with one of the leading members of the Jakarta organization (which we inherently assume was a more visible and active branch within global queer scholarship).

“Dedi, one of the tombois I worked with, was a high school graduate, nearing thirty, who worked for h/er family in Padang. Dedi was eager to make connections with other lesbi beyond Padang and was willing to risk being known as a lesbi, at least among women at the conference in Jakarta. The conversation between Dedi and the activist was witnessed by my research associate.

Activist: “What do you consider yourself to be, a man or a woman?”
Dedi: “I’m like a man.”
A: “That means you’re not a lesbian. You’re transgender.”

On recounting the story to me later that year, Dedi said, “I didn’t say anything then [in response]. I didn’t understand ‘transgender.’ I’d never heard of it before. But it doesn’t matter, I know how I feel.” Curious about h/er impressions of the lesbi she met in Jakarta, I asked Dedi if s/he noticed a difference between lesbi in Jakarta and lesbi in Padang. Dedi said, “No, they’re the same as in Padang, femmes and tombois. You can see it in their appearance. The only difference is the femmes in Jakarta can smoke but in Padang they’re not allowed to. When I first met Lin I had a hard time distinguishing between her and her partner, which one was femme [peré] and which one tomboi, because Lin smokes and carries herself like a tomboi. I had to ask [another activist who had moved to Jakarta from Padang], then I knew.” (Pg. 498-499)

Narratives are like meandering definitions, they don’t have to only communicate what the thing or being is, it gives a certain movement to it. It builds from right under your nose, in split second it changes and doesn’t only move as a singular object but collects so many attributes to it. I imagine the mannerisms of Dedi’s interaction, the forms of Indo-mascness I draw from memory and old friends. I assume the awkwardnes that might’ve been there, the body language of arms-crossed, head bobbing kindly and agreebly... just enough for the moment to dissolve softly.

How does the soil inform how you carry yourself? What does the soil call you?
Does it whisper a name to you?
Does it ask what you think first? I think it’s a funny passage.

In a peer to peer context, I feel like our ability to re-contextualise ideas to our unique social tapestries is so beautifully advance, constantly becoming new stories. But somehow as a collective public, a majority society, we somehow lose this nuance completely. Individuation and collective representation is always an interplay, expanding through powerful social movement, popularised through commercial campaigns and rebranding, intimately re-tailored through smaller communities and so on. What I want to hightlight about the reading is in looking at the discursive dynamics between the Global North and South wherein narratives, frameworks and knowledges from the Global North take precedence. But what we forget, there in lies big ideas, are divergent narratives, different narratives that do not have to be seen as threatening, that gives space to enhance, texturizw, and give timber.

Who has access to these channels? What if Blackwood’s research associate wasn’t there to witness Dedi’s interaction? What Blackwood never wrote about it? What if I didn’t write about it here now in this blog? We need to think about the ways global narratives form, about our histories, identities, bodies, and so on. We need to think about who has access to this channel. Digital communities contribute vastly to creating back and forth channels but besides for social media, how can we inject instituional narratives on a large scale? These dynamics pop in Blackwood’s essay, consistently in my overall research, and in my overall life.

In this Live Archive and the Wayang Mimpi project I am peeking into what lays between constricted labels of “Indonesianess”. What are possibile narratives in the intersections of queerness, Indonesianness and the historical present that overlaps with where I am today in the Netherlands. How do we factor in patterns of coloniality which persist through globalization, modernization, transnationalism, orientalism. How do they colour the ways the diaspora practice self-making, as a collective whole and as individuals. The narrative I fear most is in wrapped up in the alluring marketing and sales to Western tourists, expats and intellectuals ideas about Indonesia that confine it to being a simple and novel product. The pattern of coloniality I sense here lies within the precedence of universal narratives that inform a model of the correct and incorrect ways of being.

This article is a leeway for me to ask, “How can different ways of knowledges and being exist without the subjugation or reduction to a universal narrative?” A lot of smaller personal narratives are suppressed through acts of law-making, commercialising, divesting, cancelling, defunding, consuming and censoring. Sometimes it’s us who unknowingly take part in reinforcing these false dichotomies, and for long-run, they are seemingly essential for imperial projects to suceed.

At the moment, I am grappling with those terms: “neocolonial” and “neoliberalism”. I google for more definitive examples (Yes.. even on google scholar). I ask people around me for their faces, what they’d look like if they were objects but I keep getting different interpretations. I have the feeling that it is so deeply entangled within society, like the microplastics that have now become part of our bodies. I’ve made a fragmented collection of images and representations (above) that suspiciously manufacture the aesthetics of these models. I need to know their REAL names in order assemble some vague definition of it... because how can you reveal the damges they cause onto you or your community if the symptoms happen slowly over time? This is how I stumbled upon a thesis by Sunil Bhatia titled, “Decolonization and Coloniality in Human Development Neoliberalism, Globalization and Narratives of Indian Youth”.

Summary (copy/pasted from the abstract): “In this article, I (Bhatia) argues that globalization is interwoven with colonialism and coloniality and both psychology and human development are shaped by the enduring legacy of Eurocentric colonial knowledge. In particular, I draw on my ethno- graphic research in Pune, India, to show how the transnational elite, middle and working-class urban Indian youth are engaging with new practices of globalization. I examine how particular class practices shape youth narratives about globalization and “Indianness” generally, as well as specific stories about their self, identity, and family. This article is organized around three questions: (a) How has Euro-American psychology as a dominant force supported colonization and racialized models of human development? (b) What kind of stories do urban Indian youth from varied classes tell about their identity formation in contexts of neoliberal globaliza- tion? (c) How can we create and promote models of human development and psychology that are inclusive of the lives of people who live in the Global South?”

By refering to this reading, I’ve begun an interpersonal questioning of myself. Raising questions of my own positionality , my position in the spectrum of complicity within the systems that reproduce coloniality, and how to find ways to contribute to communities and practices that combat the system that uses me, my narrative and my work for consumption and performativity. The article also helps me to reflect on my own practices of “self-making” (a term I first stumbled from Bhatia) and although the study is focused on Indian youth, I do see where parallels can be made in my own curisosities about Indonesian youth and productions of self-representation. In the case of Indonesian identity or cultural narratives, I believe we need to be critical while also caring and being open to terms that have been overly exposed to slip-usage in white-liberal and identity politics (terms like appropriation, adoption, hybridization, original, authentic). There is a large part of Indonesian identity that is consistently “becoming”, emerging from the blending, stirring, and sharing amongst different regions of an island and throughout the archipelago. For example: In Toraja, Sulawesi a large part of the population is Christian, however they also practice in co-existence Aluk To Dolo (meaning the Way of the Ancestors). This sense of blending is something that is spritually practiced in cultural narrative and conciously pushed to the front. But just like in “Transnational Discourses and Circuits of Queer Knowledge In Indonesia”, there are big narrativse about Indonesian culture, mainly from tourism, whereas my experience and other Indonesian youth suggest other possibilities. A major discourse that is currently happening beneath institutions amongst young Indonesians is that within heritage and cultural work the role of preservation currently cares for the traditional craft that strongly expresses Indonesian culture but also freezes it in a certain era. In my thinking process, I feel there is a delicate balance in the dynamic of preservation, gatekeeping, allowing yourself and community to exchange and adopt practices. In order to formulate what this delicate balance is I ask these questions: How can we create expressions of a growing and evolving narrative? Can this be driven by epistempic restitution?

In so asking I look at Rolando Vasquez’s article in “Errant Journal: Aesthetic and Epistemic Resitution For the Joy of Life. Recalling The Earth, Overcoming The Contemporary, Knowing Otherwise”.

Summary (in my own words): Vasquez poetically, urgently and deeply unfolds the possibilities of epistemic restitution and it’s necessity from the position of Abya Yala. What is epistemic restitution? It is a decolonial framework we can explore to repair, remember and return what has been lost through modernity/coloniality. If you have heard of resitutiton in the context of museums, this may mean restoring looted, stolen and taken items. In epistemic restitution it is a return in the way of knowing/being. This article talks about what is to be overcomed in aesthetic and epistemic of resitution, in learning how to heal the colonial wound and in understanding how modernity/coloniality has controlled worlds as well as how we experience them.

In trying to conclude this reflection buffet, I’ve jumped from ‘how do global narratives oppress us’ to ‘know your positionality’ to ‘the answer could be epistemic restitution’. The last article really helped me put in words what I have been trying to resist my whole life. These far leaps and overly excited jumps also helped me form a shapeless question/hypothesis, but put simply, are also just worded expressions of my wander. It’s not necessarily my responsibility to make these links or reconstruct or participate in restitution... Yet here I am. This is where my curiosities, some inspiring conversations and google scholar took me.

Credit:
Audio: Train tracks wav file, litttly punky siren song, Singer: Ratri Notosudirdjo
Image1: All images from google (screenshots)