Remembering through fragmented narratives: Third generations and the intergenerational memory of the 1965 anti-leftist violence in Indonesia

Abstract

This article focuses on the intergenerational memory within families directly implicated by the 1965 anti-leftist violence in Indonesia. Under the culture of impunity, the violence remains at the margins of Indonesia’s history and collective memory, creating taboo and suppressing open talk about the event. However, taking a critical approach, we perceive this social silence as a conscious strategy of survival, rather than a fear of state repression. This strategy implicates the ways memories of violence are transferred to the following generations – when, what and how narratives are delivered or muzzled. It is also silence that actually catalyses the preservation of those memories within the families. Through the lens of the third generations in three different families of survivors, we examine how they undergo and sustain silences and narratives of violence in the family, including how they maintain those memories in the present and for the future. In relation to that, our study supports the prevailing notions that argue against interpreting silence as absence. Instead, these case studies show that in silence, memories of violence seep through what we call fragmented narratives – the incomplete, incomprehensible, irrational and sometimes mythical knowledge or experiences related to 1965 violence. In other cases, silence in the family takes the form of depoliticising figures of the first generation – detaching all their political activities and ideologies from recollection of activism.