ABSTRACT

The island of Borneo has been the subject of starkly different portrayals. On the one hand, the devastation of the island’s great rainforests, choking haze from fires set to clear land for oil palm plantations, and open-pit coal mining have prompted visions of environmental collapse. On the other hand, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s 2019 announcement that the national capital will be moved from Jakarta to East Kalimantan prompted utopian dreams that massive investment and technology will create a glorious future. This article explores how these competing portrayals of Borneo emerged historically through European and American fiction – including utopian novels, lost race stories, and pulp and science fiction – and are reflected and reproduced in Indonesian political thinking. The final section examines how these long-standing ideas about Borneo as the site of the fantastic and the phantasmagoric have colored media reporting and commentary about President Widodo’s planned new capital in East Kalimantan.

摘要

婆罗洲岛已成为截然不同的写照主题。一方面，岛上巨大的热带雨林的毁灭，大火使原本准备砍伐油棕种植园的大火窒息，露天煤矿开采也引发了环境崩溃的前景。另一方面，印度尼西亚总统约科·维多多（Joko Widodo）在2019年宣布将国家首都从雅加达迁至东加里曼丹，这激发了乌托邦式的梦想，即大规模的投资和技术将创造光荣的未来。本文探讨了婆罗洲这些相互竞争的描述是如何通过欧美小说在历史上出现的，包括空想小说，迷失的种族故事以及纸浆和科幻小说，并在印尼的政治思想中得到体现和再现。