The end of the world news

Abstract

Presciently, a year before the riots in Indonesia which brought the downfall of Soeharto, people in Bali had been arguing that a new political and social order could only emerge after apocalyptic violence, although they might well be the victims. Anthropologists and cultural studies specialists still mostly fail to appreciate the sophistication and skill in reflective thinking of ordinary people who remain at best passive subjects rather than critical, if necessarily episodic, intellectuals in their own right. A study of conversations among a group of Balinese villagers revealed a subtle sense of how mass media in general, and television in particular, were crucial to maintaining the existing political order. A central theme of the villagers’ analysis is how they had been silenced, to the point that no one would, or could, hear what they said. They were, in effect, disarticulated. Two years later I asked the same group of people whether subsequent events had confirmed or challenged their original views. On various grounds, their earlier argument seemed, if anything, more cogent. For example, the theme of the disarticulation of the majority of Indonesian people had begun to be taken up as an issue on national television. Despite widespread political violence in Indonesia, the villagers were clear that apocalypse had only just started.