Knowledge and Power in Writing History

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER IN HISTORY-MAKING (WRITING)
By Mucha-Shim Q Arquiza
ICRS 2009

A Critical Response on "Religion and Colonialism"

(Based on the ff. READINGS: M.C. Riclefs, A History of Modern Indonesia Since 1300, pp163-195; D. Bourchier, The 1950’s in New Ideology and Politics; Y.B, Mangunwijaya, “The Indonesia Raya Dream and its Impact on the Concept of Democracy” in Bourchier and Legge, eds. Democracy in Indonesia: 1950s-1990s)

Is history of religion a cultural history or political narrative?
In these three accounts of modern history of religion in Indonesia, there is an obvious shift from the largely cultural and social account in pre-history and the less emphasis on the ‘awesomeness of discovery’ of culture or, more likely, observing and documenting culture as history-writing. A departure from his treatment in ‘Mystic Synthesis in Java’, Riclefs’ account of modern history of Indonesia is at once straightforward and factual, an attempt to ‘merely record’ rather than analyze based on events chronology and facts, seemingly disenchanted and devoid of the story-teller’s ‘vouyerism’ of almost mythologized and romanticized approach that he narrates the story of royalties and empires mostly set in the grand palaces, mystical mountains and spirits-enclaves of jungles in mesmerizing Surakarta, Solo and Yogyakarta. But just like most historians’ penchance for conflicts as indispensable plot element, Riclef’s center of action is power and politics among human antagonists and protagonists in nationalists versus colonialists; the contending politics of institutions; and the struggles between individual freedom against structures, such as social (i.e. intellectual and religious) and political organizations and the masses. For where he can now comfortably weave the nation’s narrative from available first-hand actual descriptions of current events and testimony from his own personal witnessing, pre-historic account was constrained in oral traditions and narratives such as the babads handed down over generations and in ordinary peoples’ tales in extant communal memories.

Y.B. Mangunwijaya follows the same tact as Ricklefs in telling Indonesia’s narratives as the stories of its illustrious sons in tone a bit more passionate, Mangunwijaya’s account is indented with platitudes for the fathers of nationalism and is almost polemical. His own affirmation and pro-nationalist stance that underlines a supposed scholarly objectivity is betrayed by the victorious elation of an advocate and ideologue. D. Bourchier’s is a critique of New Order historians, such as Nugroho’s biases as typical propagandist of the Soeharto regime. Viewing history in his deliberate academic detachment to the subject, Bourchier pointed out the slants and inconsistencies in the militaristic views of Nugroho, where he observed to have even resorted to personal aggrandishment and monumentation of personal exploits of Soeharto and himself as military generals.

Although this survey of readings consisting of excerpts and few pages from chapters is much too insubstantial and hardly accounts for a small fraction of the three authors’ bodies of work to warrant an accurate judgment or critic, suffice to say that in these snippet or glimpses of their particular versions, in general, all three authors agree on the perspective of history as told from the exploits and narratives of great men like Sukarno, Soeharto, Hatta and majority segments of religious and political society, SI, Muhammadiyah, NU, the orthodox and modernist Muslims, the Javanese and Minangkabau abangan, etcetera, and their various religious factions and political organizations. Focus is also given to the centrality of role of religious and academic intellectuals and the physical geographic centers of action, Java and Minangkabau, vis-à-vis the global arena (i.e. the Netherlands, SEA).

One finds it easy to agree with Foucauldian contentions about the deployment and appropriation of knowledge and power. Akin to the limitations of a video camera, history-writing as human act of recording or documenting the past is undeniably ideological, a sided affair manifesting discontinuities, non-linearity and necessitating even deliberate overlapping, distorting, silencing and reiterating that may sociopsychologically predispose the readers into an attitude or belief defining and translating a certain politics of history-making and reproduction - potential pitfalls and prejudices that one must always be conscious in appreciating and evaluating the claims and truths as part of human cultural complexities. ###MSQA###