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Mining the Past: Working with Memory in Southeast Asian Contexts
Organizer: Katharine McGregor, University of Melbourne
Chair: Nicki Tarulevicz, Cleveland State University
Discussant: Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University
Memory is one of the most significant markers of identity, yet with the exception of works such as Tai (2001) and Zurbuchen (2005) studies of memory and memory work in Southeast Asian contexts are underrepresented. Through an analysis of state narratives, autobiographies, memoir and oral histories, we explore how the state, marginalised groups, returning diaspora and historians mine the past in order to construct effective narratives about their experiences and those of their subjects. We look at diverse processes of selection, interpretation and narrative composition across individual, group and national memory. Attention is also given to methodological issues involved with working with memory in cross-cultural contexts and the role of the historian in mediating and analysing memory. Nicki Tarulevicz examines the emergence of state controlled nostalgia in Singapore. She interprets this as an effort to curtail counter-cultures and to stunt the development of critical historiography. Kate McGregor analyses recently published memoirs of former political prisoners in Indonesia. She explores the meanings these authors seek to attach to their experiences and the extent to which these accounts are written as counter-narratives to New Order histories. Nathalie Nguyen investigates the ways in which Vietnamese diasporic women remember and narrate their experiences of returning to Vietnam and how they conceptualise home in this process. Jemma Purdey reflects on working with memory in cross-cultural contexts for the purposes of writing a biography of a prominent Australian Indonesianist.
Co-opting Nostalgia: Historical Tensions in Singapore
Nicki Tarulevicz, Cleveland State University
Singapore’s unusual national beginnings provide the context for the rise of nostalgia in this island state. That is, it is Singapore’s reluctant and comparatively recent, national birth that has partly been the catalyst for a growing nostalgia amongst the citizenry. The newness of Independent Singapore is offered, by both the state and scholars, as an explanation for its lack of historical engagement. The formulation of a national identity that relies for its substance on the construction of the future makes Singapore a rather unusual case among nations that are accustomed to invoking their past to legitimize the present. It is Singapore’s emphasis on the future and its ambivalence towards the past that has both stunted the development of critical historiography and provided something of a catalyst for nostalgia. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), in typical adaptive style, moved from overt hostility towards Singaporean History, to a position of embracing the new nostalgia. In order to make that nostalgia national useful the PAP devoted considerable attention to stipulating what is desirable nostalgia. Much of this nostalgia has been channeled into the preservation of buildings. Heritage has become an acceptable site of nostalgia. In a similar vein, nostalgia for material culture is seen as acceptable. Food too, is seen as a desirable area for Singaporeans to feel nostalgia about. While nostalgia can be seen as a response to both a future-focused regime and to prescriptive National History, the state has been quick to depoliticize nostalgia. A counter-culture is not being created; rather the state is attempting to co-opt nostalgia to help fulfill nationalist aims.
Remembering 1965: Prison Memoirs as Counter Narratives in Indonesia
Katharine McGregor, University of Melbourne
Memoirs of imprisonment can serve powerful purposes. The memoirs of Nelson Mandela and other victims of apartheid in South Africa have, for example, functioned to create heroic narratives of resistance to oppression. Readers of such memoirs usually have expectations that these accounts of extreme suffering will provide unique insights into the human condition or produce social change by providing powerful counter narratives to the histories of their oppressors, but is this necessarily the case? This paper analyses key themes in the recent spate of memoirs and other publications produced by former Indonesian political prisoners imprisoned after the 1965 coup for their alleged links to the communist party. It examines the meanings these authors seek to attach to their experiences and the extent to which these accounts are bounded by the need to counter histories produced by the New Order regime. It also explores the public reception of these works. These memoirs make an interesting case study because most have been published in the context of ambiguous and even suspicious broader attitudes towards these former prisoners. For the duration of the New Order regime and beyond it communism and those associated with it have been upheld as a social evil. The reasons for the persistence of these images are linked to the involvement of not only the Indonesian military, but also religious communities in the persecution of communists in the mid 1960s.
Return to Vietnam: The Journeys of Vietnamese Women of the Diaspora
Nathalie HC Nguyen, University of Melbourne
The Vietnamese diaspora following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 was one of the largest and most visible migrations in the late twentieth century. More than two million Vietnamese left their homeland and made new lives for themselves overseas, principally in the United States, Australia, Canada and France. As part of an Australian Research Council project carried out in Australia, Vietnamese women were asked to remember and narrate their experiences of exodus and resettlement. This paper will explore the memories and experiences of Vietnamese women refugees and migrants who journeyed back to Vietnam after their initial years of resettlement overseas. Despite leaving their country of birth under often traumatic conditions, many women have opted to return to Vietnam, whether for short or extended stays. Some have returned only once, others several times. Return journeys are usually prompted by the illness or death of family members and the desire to be reunited with parents or siblings after several years of separation. Women relate their experiences and what this return to their country of origin has signified. For many, the return journey is an intensely emotional experience that enables women to reassess and modify their conception of home and homeland.
Many Voices, One Life: Dealing with memory and ‘telling’ in the biography of Herb Feith
Jemma Purdey, Monash University
Herb Feith (1930-2001) was one of the first Australians to live and work in the newly independent Indonesia in the early 1950s. He is regarded in Australia and Indonesia as an almost iconic symbol of the relationship between the two nations. The respect and affection with which he was regarded by Indonesians whilst alive and still after his death, was due to the vast and deep knowledge he had of Indonesia but also his genuine passion for its people and their future. An understanding of his ability to build relationships across cultures, class and world experience is critical in telling his life. A key part of research for the biography is the collection of an ‘oral history’ – testimonials and interviews with the subject’s friends, family and colleagues across several nations, particularly Australia and Indonesia. This paper investigates how these many voices, including my own, participating in the story-telling of a single life, can be brought together in biographical narrative. It will explore the complexities and difficulties associated with this process in a multi-national and multi-cultural setting. Questions include, do ideas of memory around ‘a life’ vary from one national or cultural context to another? How does the present reality in Indonesia and Australia impact on how the subject is remembered in the past? Does nostalgia have a prominent part to play? This paper unpicks how the various ‘histories’, often conflicting, always personal, provided by interviewees fundamentally combine to ‘write’ this biography. As Robert Perks calls it, “history through composite autobiography” (An Oral History Reader, 1998). At the same time, in oral history for biography, the part of feeling and emotion is extremely important.