Violence as Aporia - Roy Allan B Tolentino

There is something altogether chilling in reading the accounts of the killings of 1965-66. Part of this discomfort comes from the candour with which these scholars admit the shortcomings of theory and critical analysis in understanding why these killings took place. Details such as the sequence of events, unreliable statistics, key figures and dates allow us a few footholds by which to approach this precipice, but eventually, we stand at the edge of the abyss in anxiety and puzzlement. As Robert Cribb puts it: “We look into the hearts of mass murderers and wonder whether we are in fact looking into those of our colleagues, our families, ourselves.” (Cribb 1990:15)

However, it is more discomfiting to realize that, perhaps to this day, some feel that the killings were justified; the extermination of the PKI appears to be an unfortunate but necessary bump in Indonesian history. The New Order government did a lot to distribute complicity in the killings and engender a sense of shame despite the aberrant character of this whole episode. This shame, combined with collective trauma, makes the banality of this episode even more stark. As Cribb notes, the killings were not borne of ideology, but something more base: “Ideological motives were there in the Indonesian case, of course, along with fear, revenge, adventure and so on but for the most part the perceived need to kill arose out of a sense of self-interest and self-defense, and was in no way dictated by a formal ideological world view.” (Cribb 1990:15)

While this is certainly not a formal ideology, it is still a mentality of the type described by Emmanuel Levinas. Diagnosing the human condition, Levinas sees that violence of this sort or of any other is made possible only by demonizing difference and proclaiming the sovereignty of the self. As Levinas says, “violence is to be found in any action in which one acts as if one were alone to act: as if the rest of the universe were there only to receive the action; violence is consequently also any action which we endure without at every point collaborating in it.” (Levinas 1990:6) The pattern of ego-logy on the level of the individual is repeated and exponentially magnified on the level of groups: what is different (in this case, communist) is to be subsumed and made the same, or destroyed and made of no consequence. Inasmuch as violence is an aporia for understanding, in that theorists have failed to explain satisfactorily how one descends into the wanton violence of mass killing, it is also an aporia for the perpetrator. In the words of Pascal: “'This is my place in the sun.' That is how the usurpation of the whole world began.” Indeed, the world is usurped in the demarcation between “us” and “them,” in which “us” is superior, infallible, the arbiter of “justice.” The violence that arises from such a distinction shrinks the world; there is no way out if the whole world revolves only around yourself and what you consider correct. Hannah Arendt’s words might well describe the killings of 1965: “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Unfortunately, as long as difference is used to justify division and discrimination, the aporia of violence will remain.

Cribb, Robert. “Introduction” in The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966: Studies from Java and Bali. Ed. Robert Cribb. Victoria: CSEAS, Monash University Press, 1990.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Ethics and Spirit” in Difficult Freedom: Essays in Judaism. Trans. Sean Hand. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1990.