Cultural Trauma, Collective Memory and the Vietnam War

Part of a wider project on how the Vietnam War (1945-1975) is remembered by three key collectives, Vietnamese communists, Vietnamese Americans and the United States, this article focuses primarily on the latter. Using the theory of cultural trauma as its framework, this is a study in trauma and collective memory, its impact and the social processes through which such memory is constructed and maintained. The central point is that collective memory is an active agent in explaining why individuals and collectivities act as they do. It is argued that collective memory is represented and reproduced in narrative form through various means, such as oral telling, literature, music, drama, film, monuments, museum installations and commemorative events. Through such media and related ritual practices, the stories and myths that congeal as collective memory serve as a foundation upon which collective identity rests. The defeat in Vietnam continues to haunt American collective memory and has yet to be reduced to history

Assimilation—On (Not) Turning White: Memory and the Narration of the Postwar History of Japanese Canadians in Southern Alberta

This essay explores understandings of “race” – specifically, what it means to be Japanese – of nisei (“second generation”) individuals who acknowledge their near complete assimilation structurally and normatively into the Canadian mainstream. In historically-contextualized analyses of memory fragments from oral-history interviews conducted between 2011-2017, it focusses on voices and experiences of southern Alberta, an area whose significance to local, national, continental, and trans-Pacific histories of people of Japanese descent is belied by a lack of dedicated scholarly attention. In this light, this essay reveals how the fact of being Japanese in the latter half of the twentieth century was strategically central to nisei lives as individuals and in their communities. In imagining a racial hierarchy whose apex they knew they could never share with the hakujin (whites), the racial heritage they nevertheless inherited and would bequeath could be so potent as to reverse the direction of the colonial gaze with empowering effects in individual engagements then and as remembered now. We see how the narration and validation of one’s life is the navigation of wider historical contexts, the shaping of the post-colonial legacy of Imperial cultures, as Britain and Japan withdrew from their erstwhile colonial projects in Canada

Between culture and politics : intellectuals in modern society

xi, 210 p.; 24 cm

Cendikiawan antara budaya dan politik dalam masyarakat modern

Buku ini memaparkan seluruh konspirasi sejarah yang selama ini kita yakini lewat tutur kata maupun pelajaran di sekolah. Seandainya tidak ada buku ini, sejarah bangsa Indonesia, tidak ada yang berani menguak setajam dan selugas Dhakidae. Sejarah akan tetap gelap dan kekuasaan bahasa yang diwacanakan akan semakin mendorong bangsa ini saling membenci. Perdebatan tentang PKI misalnya, hingga saat inipun masih tergelapkan oleh suasana yang tidak fair dalam membaca sebuah sejarah. Dhakidae, dengan menggunakan dokumen transkrip yang asli maupun yang diterbitkan untuk umum dan diberi pengantar oleh Soeharto, disimpulkan bahwa Gerakan G 30 S/PKI, ternyata bukan oleh PKI. Sejarah Perjuangan Kebangsaan Indonesia, tak bisa dilepaskan dari peran para cendekiawan dari waktu-ke-waktu. Oleh karena itu, menguak sejarah berarti menyoroti: karakter, peran, sumbangan, latar belakang, dan basis sosial-ekonomi-politik. Melongok sejarah mundur ke belakang pada tahun dimana Boedi Oetomo didirikan. Pada periode ini terjadi suatu gerak a-simetris kebudayaan. Hal itu berupa: Belanda memasuki kebudayaan pribumi sejauh mungkin, dalam pada itu tidak membiarkan pribumi memasuki kebudayaan di bagian yang paling inti yaitu bahasa

Cendekiawan : antara budaya dan politik dalam masyarakat modern

Jakartaxx, 290 p.; 21 cm

Representing Trauma in the Arts: the Curious Case of “Quo Vadis, Aida?”

Applying Jurgen Habermas’ distinction between the three knowledge interests‎ guiding scientific research, this article identifies three approaches to ‘trauma’,‎ a clinical approach, rooted in a medical model, a literary approach, rooted‎in psychoanalysis, and a cultural sociological approach. After elaborating on‎ each of these perspectives, and the various forms through which trauma is ‎represented aesthetically, the three are applied in an analysis of the film “Quo‎Vadis, Aida?”. It is argued that although they entail different notions of trauma,‎ the three are not mutually exclusive and can be combined in a rich understanding ‎of aesthetic representation.