Abstract

Through an experience of reading, researching and interacting with people with different cultural backgrounds in academia, I explore autoethnographically how my personal experience can offer a way to contemplate connections and disassociations of cultural memory in relation to the May 1998 Riots of Indonesia. I attempt to show how disruptive events can bring the traumatic memories back into current consciousness both within individual lives and in the challenges that Jakarta as a city has in coming to terms with the dead and raped bodies that were the result of the country’s denial of its practices of violence. Disturbing memories emerge as cities deal with perturbing events that destroy their image as multicultural cities. Moving across the boundaries of generations, timeframes, and space that connect fragmented memories embodied in selected literary works, I aim to explore different ways in which denial can bring back fragmented memories and a need to ‘come to terms’ with such traumatic histories. I also explore how the May 1998 Riots memory has been dynamically shaped through the adoption of traumascapes in literature, and how questions of re/membering mass rape and violence have affected the creative writing practice.

摘要

通过阅读、研究和与学术界具有不同文化背景的人互动的经历，我以自身民族志的方式探索了我的个人经历如何提供一种方式来思考与 1998 年 5 月印度尼西亚骚乱相关的文化记忆的联系和分离。我试图展示破坏性事件如何将创伤性记忆带回个人生活中的当前意识，以及雅加达作为一个城市在接受由于该国否认其造成的死亡和被强奸的尸体而面临的挑战中。暴力行为。当城市处理破坏其多元文化城市形象的令人不安的事件时，就会出现令人不安的记忆。跨越世代、时间框架的界限，和空间连接体现在选定文学作品中的碎片记忆，我的目标是探索否认可以带回碎片记忆的不同方式，以及与这些创伤历史“达成协议”的需要。我还探讨了 1998 年 5 月的暴动记忆是如何通过在文学中采用创伤场景而动态塑造的，以及重新/记忆大规模强奸和暴力的问题如何影响创意写作实践。