Displacing Political Islam in Indonesia

Itinerario ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Chiara Formichi

ABSTRACT This article investigates the narrative of Islamic nationalism in twentieth-century Indonesia, focussing on the experience of, and discourse surrounding, the self-identified Islamist Darul Islam movement and its leader, S. M. Kartosuwiryo (1905–1962). I offer a narrative of the independence struggle that counters the one advanced by Indonesia's Pancasila state, and allows us to capture subtleties that old discussions of separatism—with their assumption of fixed centres and peripheries—cannot illuminate. The article unfolds three historical threads connected to ideas of exile and displacement (physical and intellectual), and the reconstitution (successful or failed) that followed from those processes. Starting from the political circumstances under which Kartosuwiryo retreated to West Java after the Dutch reinvasion of 1947—in a form of physical exile and political displacement from the centre of politics to the periphery, from a position of political centrality to one of marginality and opposition—I then transition to an elaboration of Kartosuwiryo's ideology. His political strategy emerges as a form of voluntary intellectual displacement that bounced between local visions of authority, nationalist projects, and transregional imaginations in order to establish the political platform he envisioned for postcolonial Indonesia. Lastly, I argue that the elision of Islam from the reconstructed narrative of Kartosuwiryo's intentions, characterised as separatist and anti-nationalist, was a key aspect of Indonesia's nation-building process. It is my final contention that official Indonesian history's displacement of Kartosuwiryo's goals away from Islam and into the realm of separatism allowed for two reconstitutive processes, one pertaining to political Islam as a negative political force, and the other to Kartosuwiryo as a martyr for Islam.

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-118
Author(s):  
Eric A. Winkel

We are at a crossroads where the time is ripe for the emerging Muslim thought to once again set the standard for universal participation and debate. My continual argument with Mona Abul-Fadl's concept of kairos in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 1, (September 1989 supplement) is whether the openness of the discourse realm is a result of what Gai Eaton describes as the process of decomposition releasing explosive gases, where the "ripeness" is putridity, or a beneficial progress of ideas. Does postmodern deconstruction, decentralization, and destruction create a foothold for the remembering of Islam? Or will the Islamic discourse enter the scene to be trivialized and relativized in the encounter? From my perspective, I tie the movements of the paradigms to the political encounter with the other, where the self-described American establishment was forced to recognize the non-white, the non-male, the non-consumer. More sensitive to complexities, calmer in her approach, and without any reductionism or oversimplification, Mona Abul-Fadl recognizes the "mundane" links of ideas, but treats them with respect nevertheless. It is her insight to see in the tanzil, in the physical and already interpreted descent of the Qur'an and Sunnah, the one rope on which we may spin, in shaa Allah, the Islamic discourse for it to achieve grounding and affirmation in a world of chaos and alienation. We are in a time when a metacritique may now become possible, where the crisis in Western thought coincides with a dawning epistemic consciousness among Muslims. "We are living," she notes, "at the threshold of a critical era which is steadily being acknowledged as such. The designation 'post­modernity' indicates the direction of the transition away from the established canon of values and beliefs identified with the European Enlightenment." ...


Author(s):  
Marcin Wodziński

This chapter addresses the ideological crisis among Polish Jewish integrationists at the start of the twentieth century. One of the signs of departure from the old ideological line was the rapidly changing attitude to hasidism. On the one hand, politically involved journalists such as Nachum Sokołów saw a new political threat in the hasidic movement and called for an alliance of all non-hasidic political forces against this group. On the other hand, from the mid-1890s, it became more and more common to idealize the hasidic past, to see the movement as the fascinating creation of folk mysticism, a depository of authentic Jewish folklore, and above all an excellent literary theme. These two attitudes, although they seemed contradictory, frequently coexisted. Usually, they were evident in the belief that the good and beautiful teachings of the fathers of hasidism were later distorted by the tsadikim and had led to the contemporary degenerate form of the political movement. The great interest in the origins of the movement was undoubtedly an attempt to escape contemporary reality and, at the same time, to escape the confrontational attitudes of the maskilim. This was obviously the result of changes in European writings that took place at the turn of the century in relation to the historiographic, philosophical, and literary portrayal of hasidism.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Lubaś

A document of open thought: Józef Obrębski’s studies on the Polesie region and debates on ethnic groups and nationality relations in Polish ethnology and sociologyThis article attempts to reconstruct and examine the concept of the ethnic diversity and nationalization process found in the writings of the Polish anthropologist and sociologist Józef Obrębski (1905-1967). It will be argued that Obrębski view on ethnic diversity and the nationalization allowed him not only to conceive of a highly original idea of nation-building process but also maintain a critical distance from the two forms of reflection and practice – “investigative modalities” – influential in the field of ethnic and national studies in prewar as well as in postwar Poland: “ethnogeography” and the “sociology of nation”. In the same time this text aims at underscoring usefulness of Obrębski ideas for contemporary analysis. Close reading of Obrębski works provides us with fresh tools for the ethnographic processual examination of the nationalization policies. It draws special attention to the process of nationalization of local populations, highlighting various and contradictory consequences of nationalization process: integration and homogenisation on the one hand and exclusions of minorities and class hierarchization of people on the other. Dokument myśli otwartej. Studia poleskie Józefa Obrębskiego a rozważania o grupach etnicznych i stosunkach narodowościowych w polskiej etnologii i socjologiiCelem artykułu jest omówienie koncepcji grup etnicznych i procesów unaradawiania wyłaniających się z prac Józefa Obrębskiego. W szczególności chodzi o wykazanie, że swoimi badaniami na Polesiu Obrębski wniósł niezwykle oryginalny wkład w badania stosunków etnicznych i narodowościowych, podając jednocześnie w wątpliwość niektóre założenia tkwiące u podstaw dwu modalności dociekań obecnych w polskich badaniach nad etnicznością i kwestiami narodowymi: czyli etnogeografii oraz socjologii narodu. Jednocześnie tekst służy ukazaniu aktualności propozycji teoretycznych i metodologicznych Obrębskiego w badaniach stosunków etnicznych i narodowościowych. Lektura pism Obrębskiego dostarcza perspektywy umożliwiającej nie tylko krytykę nacjonalizmu metodologicznego ale również daje podstawy do procesualnej, etnograficznej - uwzględniającej mikrostrukturalny wymiar władzy - analizy zjawisk etnicznych i stosunków narodowościowych. Otwiera to możliwość badania różnych niekiedy odmiennych i sprzecznych ze sobą efektów procesów unaradawiania, zarówno integracji i wyrównywania szans jak też konfliktów i wykluczenia społecznego.


2020 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Glenda Sluga

This chapter explores points of ideological and institutional intersection in the Habsburg and Austrian past in the context of a new historiography of internationalism and studies of the League of Nations. Drawing from the expanding historiography of international ideas and institutions, on the one hand, and the uncollected evidence of people and politics of the Habsburg empire-cum-Austrian republic, on the other, its intention is to gauge the political, cultural, and economic significance of strands of the ‘new internationalism’ in the history of the Habsburg empire, and its afterlife. This is nowhere more obvious than in the persistent invocations, through the first half of the twentieth century, of the affinities between the post-First World War history of internationalism and Austria’s prewar experience with diversity and multi-nationality, and the persistent political and cultural ambitions attached to the specific idea of Weltösterreich.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Castellitti

This paper proposes some anthropological notes on aviation and national imaginaries, taking Varig, an important Brazilian airline with international projection and recognition, as a starting point. The analysis is based on an explorative perspective, which included fieldwork among Varig’s former employees, especially female flight attendants who joined the carrier in the 1970s and 1980s and remained until the closure of its activities. Alongside the testimonies of these employees, it analyses magazine and television advertisements from Varig and other Brazilian airlines, in order to throw some light on the pertinence of gender, class and race as social markers that structured the aviation field in the second half of the twentieth century. Through a critical perspective, this work launches heterodox interpretative challenges on the nation-building process, hoping thus to contribute to a better understanding of the political and ideological games that characterised the formation of the nation.


Author(s):  
ÁGNES TAMÁS

This paper aims to present a comparative analysis of caricatures published in Hungarian (Üstökös, Borsszem Jankó), Serbian (Bič, Vrač pogađač), Romanian (Gur’a Satului), and Slovak (Černokňažník) satirical press in Hungary in the second half of the nineteenth century. The depth of the connection between identity, nation building, and humour will be demonstrated. Theories of nationalism often emphasise the primacy of the role of the press and of print media in nation building processes. To investigate this, humorous printed sources have been selected. The comparison utilises and complements Anthony D. Smith’s definition of the ethnic core and reflects on Christie Davies’ theory of ethnic humour. Tethered by these concepts, the analysis of the caricatures investigates the following aspects: names for the Self and the Other, elements of culture and tradition (languages, habits, religions, supposed characteristics, clothing and bodily features), symbols of the Self and the Other, historical memories and myths of the common ancestry of the Self and the Other, and the definitions of “our” vs. “their” territory and homeland. This analysis reveals that the stereotypes observed in satirical magazines and the images of the Other and of the Self depicted through the use of humorous or ironic techniques can be effectively distinguished and connected to the nation building process and to the process of shaping “enemies”.


Stasis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-38
Author(s):  
Janar Mihkelsaar

In this article, I argue that at the center of Jean-Luc Nancy’s approach to the political lies the thinking of subject as that of relation. Throughout the historical actualizations of, for example, the individual, the state, or the people as a subject, the problematic of relation is one that has retreated and now demands to be subjected to a retreatment. When the arche-teleological presuppositions that constitute subject as that which is given enter the phase of deconstruction, subject comes to present itself as nothing but the activity of relating itself to itself. I respond to Nancy’s call to invent “an affirmation of relation” by way of rethinking the logics of sovereignty and democracy. While sovereignty unites, posits, finitizes, and finishes the self of the people, a post-68 democracy pluralizes, infinitizes, and disfigures the identity of the people. Between sovereignty and democracy, notwithstanding their conflicting tenets, the relation is not that of reciprocal exclusion. One is rather the correlative of the other. Without the one, the other would not make any sense. Through this Janus-faced economy of the political, the people can experience its own “reality”—to experience relation itself. The affirmation of relation is what gives and keeps free the voided site of the political for the infinite self-institution of the people, and for that reason is political par excellence.


Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.


APRIA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
José Teunissen

In the last few years, it has often been said that the current fashion system is outdated, still operating by a twentieth-century model that celebrates the individualism of the 'star designer'. In I- D, Sarah Mower recently stated that for the last twenty years, fashion has been at a cocktail party and has completely lost any connection with the public and daily life. On the one hand, designers and big brands experience the enormous pressure to produce new collections at an ever higher pace, leaving less room for reflection, contemplation, and innovation. On the other hand, there is the continuous race to produce at even lower costs and implement more rapid life cycles, resulting in disastrous consequences for society and the environment.


Author(s):  
Nicolas Wiater

This chapter examines the ambivalent image of Classical Athens in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities. This image reflects a deep-seated ambiguity of Dionysius’ Classicist ideology: on the one hand, there is no question for Dionysius that Athenocentric Hellenicity failed, and that the Roman empire has superseded Athens’ role once and for all as the political and cultural centre of the oikoumene. On the other, Dionysius accepted Rome’s supremacy as legitimate partly because he believed (and wanted his readers to believe) her to be the legitimate heir of Classical Athens and Classical Athenian civic ideology. As a result, Dionysius develops a new model of Hellenicity for Roman Greeks loyal to the new political and cultural centre of Rome. This new model of Greek identity incorporates and builds on Classical Athenian ideals, institutions, and culture, but also supersedes them.


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