Abstract Comparative Literature in the Spirit of Bandung: Script Change, Language Choice, and Ideology in African and Asian Literatures (Senegal & Indonesia) Annette Damayanti Lienau 2011 My dissertation compares the politics and poetics of language choice in the literary histories of Senegal and Indonesia as national case studies from Africa and Asia. It examines key historical moments through which the contours of literary nationalism were posited and challenged by ideologically informed, transnational literary movements (pan-Islamism and Communism). The positions of Senegal and Indonesia at the extremes of a trans-continental literary realm with an Arabic textual tradition, and the marginalization of Arabic for transcription during the colonial period, offers a primary basis for comparison between the two national contexts. The first portion of the dissertation on Senegalese literature is subdivided into three chapters, with each devoted to an author whose work represents a distinct linguistic, literary orientation in Senegal: Amadu Bamba (the Arabic language poet and founder of Senegal's most widespread Sufi Order, Muridism), Leopold Sedar Senghor (the Francophone poet and Senegal's first president and linguistic policymaker after independence), and Ousmane Sembene (the author and filmmaker whose oppositional language politics drew him to vernacular language film-making, primarily in Wolof, and to the founding of the first vernacular language journal in Senegal). By complementing my analysis on the politics and poetics of linguistic choice in the works of Amadu Bamba (in Arabic) and Senghor (in French) with an interpretation of Ousmane Sembene's work, I develop an initial method of reading that considers how the traces of foregone linguistic alternatives are nonetheless sustained in individual texts and in the fissures of Senegalese literary history. If my reading of Bamba analyzes his poetry in the context of the French colonial displacement and manipulation of Arabic within the public sphere at the turn of the twentieth century, and if my reading of Senghor's work (written in the wake of this displacement) considers Senghor's reconfiguration of French as a linguistic choice rather than a systemic imposition, Sembene's fictional re-narrations of Senegalese history present a foreshortened reading of these linguistic vicissitudes, while offering a counter-prescription (Wolof) embedded in the bilingual patterns of his written work. This "palimpsestic" interpretation of Sembene's work, in other words, not only considers its synchronic value, by examining how the linguistic texture of his work depends on bilingual narrative patterns, it also considers its diachronic value, by assessing the text itself as a historical event. Focused on Indonesian literature, the second half of the dissertation employs the interpretive methods developed in the introductory chapters, while offering comparative readings of Senegalese and Indonesian authors on the displacement of Arabic as a literary language (and a mode of transcription), the coupling of language choice and ideology, and the representation of linguistic competition in the revisionist historical fiction of leftist authors and filmmakers. The Indonesian case study is also divided into chapters devoted to representative figures of Indonesian proto-nationalist poetry (Chairil Anwar), leftist literature and film (Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Sjuman Djaya), and Indonesian authors of pan-Islamist, religious persuasion (Hamka). At the other extreme of an Arabic-language cosmopolis, my Indonesian case study begins by examining the legacy of colonial, Arabic script displacement in both the literary and political spheres, traced through the writings of the trilingual authour and chairman of Indonesia's first Islamic clerical council, Hamka (a prominent arbiter on Indonesian language politics in the "New Order"). This inaugural chapter on Indonesian literature, like my preceding work on Senegal, highlights the centrality of romanization and Arabic script displacement in the formation of a "nationalized" language, and considers its implications for the development of local literature and the projections of literary "modernity." The subsequent chapter of my Indonesian case study, on comparative experiments in leftist literature, examines the work of Pramoedya Ananta Toer (an ardent defender of socialist realism in Indonesia) and Sjumanjaya (who, like Sembene, was trained in cinematography in Moscow). In this chapter, I focus not only on the common ideological influences that inform their work, but also on the portrayal of linguistic choice in their revisionist historical fiction, their depiction of Arabic as a linguistic alternative to Malay or Wolof, and their common dignification of vernacular print culture. To conclude the joint analysis of two case studies on Senegal and Indonesia, the final chapter of the dissertation returns to a comparative examination of poetic form and poetry's reception. Beginning with a comparative reading of Senghor and the Indonesian poet Chairil Anwar (whose poetry has become synonymous with the Indonesian Revolution), the chapter explores the relationship between poetry and sacralized language, and the predicament of poetry's relative monoglossia for the bilingual poet who chooses between competing languages and scripts. Comparative Literature in the Spirit of Bandung: Script Change, Language Choice, and Ideology in African and Asian Literatures (Senegal & Indonesia) Annette Damayanti Lienau 2011 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University In Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Annette Damayanti Lienau Dissertation Director: Christopher L. Miller December 2011 Lienau UMI Number: 3496940 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Dissertation Publishing UMI 3496940 Copyright 2012 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. uest ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ©2011 Annette Damayanti Lienau All rights reserved. Lienau 2 Acknowledgments Lienau 3 Acknowledgments For their generous guidance and support for my dissertation project in its many incarnations, I would like to extend my greatest thanks to my advisors, Christopher Miller and Tony Day. Preliminary research for the dissertation in Dakar, Senegal, was enabled through the Yale Macmillan Predissertation Research Grant, the John F. Enders Grant, and the Yale Graduate School Language Studies Fellowship (in 2008). Further research undertaken in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Egypt was made possible through a Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, generously awarded by the Social Science Research Council (in 2009-2010). The dissertation was brought to completion with support from the Mellon Early Career Dissertation Completion Fellowship, granted from the American Council of Learned Societies (2010-2011). I would also like to extend my thanks to my many mentors and interlocutors in Senegal and Indonesia. For his extraordinary insights into the workings of the Wolof language, the intricacies of Senegalese culture, and Senegal's political history, Professor Souleymane Faye at the Centre de Linguistique Appliquee de Dakar, at the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop, deserves my deepest gratitude. I am extremely grateful to Abdullah Fahmy Aidara for his illuminating expositions of Amadu Bamba's thought and poetry, to Alain Sembene for his friendship and generosity during my visit to Dakar, and to Mme. Seynabou Mbaye and her family for welcoming me into their home and embodying for me the spirit of teranga during my stay in Senegal. For her generous counsel and research sponsorship during my year in Indonesia, I would also like to extend my thanks to Professor Melani Budianta at the University of Indonesia. I am also grateful to Mona Lohanda, Hilmar Farid, and Hairus Salim, whose early suggestions left me with invaluable leads for my research in Indonesia. To Pak Berthy Ibrahim and Nia Sulaeman of the Pusat Perfilman Usmar Ismail, and to the staff of the H.B. Jassin Institute and the Perpustakaan Nasional in Salemba, I extend my thanks for their extraordinary support during my archival research in Jakarta. Pak Berthy's insights and Mbak Nia's persistence in acquiring and recovering rare films and materials on Indonesian film history proved invaluable for my research. To my extended family in Indonesia, I am also extremely grateful for their support and generosity during a year of intense research and travel. This dissertation would not have been written without the encouragement and support of close friends, writing companions, and colleagues in the field and in the United States. Among the many friends and colleagues to whom I am especially grateful, I would like to thank Laura Bohn, Yehonathan Brodski, Andy Conroe, Yos Dappu, Rossen Djagalov, Christine Kalleeny, Catherine Flynn, Kevin Fogg, Alice Mandell, Richard Payne, Emily Setina, and Meg Furniss Weisberg. For their patience, love, and encouragement throughout the many personal discoveries and challenges presented by my research, I would like to thank my parents and