Contestations of Memory in Southeast Asia pg ii BLANK Contestations of Memory in Southeast Asia Edited by Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon © 2011 Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon Published by : NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress ISBN 978-9971-69-506-4 (Paper) All rights reserved. Th is book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Cover: Typeset by : Scientifi k Graphics Printed by : CONTENTS Introduction 1 Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon Part I: Southeast Asia within the Field of Memory Studies Chapter 1 Th e Work of Memory and the Unfi nished Past: Deepening and Widening the Study of Memory in Southeast Asia 17 Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon Part II: Nationalisms and the Construction of Destinies Chapter 2 “Remembering Kings: Ethnologies, Legitimacy and Leadership in Myanmar” 53 Maitrii Aung-Th win Chapter 3 Shifting Visions of the Past: Ethnic Minorities and the ‘Struggle for National Independence’ in Laos 83 Vatthana Pholsena Chapter 4 Truth and Memory: Narrating Viet Nam 106 Sharon Seah Li-Lian Chapter 5 Textual Construction of a Nation: Th e Use of Merger and Separation 125 Dayang Istiaisyah bte Hussin Chapter 6 Remembering, Misremembering and Forgetting: Th e Struggle over Serangan Oemoem 1 Maret 1949 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia 157 Heddy Shri Ahimsa Putra v vi Contents Part III: Traumatic Memories: Interpenetrations of Collective and Personal Experience Chapter 7 War and Violence, History and Memory: Th e Philippine Experience of the Second World War 185 Ricardo T. José Chapter 8 Th e Past in the Present: Memories of the 1964 ‘Racial Riots’ in Singapore 200 Adeline Low Hwee Cheng Chapter 9 Memories at the Margins: Chinese-Educated Intellectuals in Singapore 229 Kwok Kian-Woon and Kelvin Chia Chapter 10 Living with the Spectre of the Past: Traumatic Experiences among Wives of Former Political Prisoners of the ‘1965 Event’ in Indonesia 269 Budiawan Contributors 291 Index 295 Introduction 1 Introduction Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon his volume brings together case studies in social memory from a wide range of historical contexts in diff erent Southeast Asian Tcountries. Th ey all, in diverse ways, draw inspiration from the newly expanding literature on social memory, to which at the same time the authors also seek to make a fresh and substantial contribution. Since the early 1990s, the burgeoning cross-disciplinary concern with social memory has heightened awareness that remembering, as a dimension of social relationships, is nothing if not a political matter. In diff erent ways, the papers in this volume seek to ask: “What are the stakes involved in memory?” Th is question is inextricably tied to another — “What are the stakes involved in people’s eff orts to arrive at a more accurate or complete account of the past, diff erent from offi cial or other selective but dominant accounts?” How does the multiplicity of individual memories existing in any social context become shared, entering into the fl ow of collective memory? How do they work against the grain of hegemonic narratives that seek to suppress that diversity in the interests of presenting a more unitary, simplifi ed view of the past, a view that all citizens are invited to adhere to? In our opening chapter, we as editors attempt to sketch a frame- work for memory studies by taking some account of the psychological literature. It is our opinion that not enough eff ort has been made on either side to build the necessary bridges between psychological and sociological approaches to the study of memory, or to examine sys- tematically how concepts currently being developed by psychologists can be applied to the understanding of memory as a social phenomenon. We seek at least to begin the business of linking the insights of the psychological literature to the concerns that drive memory studies in sociology and history. Dimensions of individual recall, such as selecti- vity, distortion and elaboration, need to be patiently traced and analyzed 1 2 Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon in social contexts too. But the important question for students of social, as opposed to purely individual, memory is transmission. Since pro- cesses of memory transmission are so elusive, we are obliged to seek clues through close-grained analysis of particular case studies. Th ose we have collected here contribute, we believe, a wealth of insights into these processes. We set out to propose an agenda for such studies in South- east Asia, taking account of themes that might link crucial events in this region to those that have happened elsewhere. Th e focus is on the often tumultuous events of the twentieth century, and it will soon become clear that most of the memory issues dealt with here are traumatic. We ask what eff ect this trauma has on social memory processes, and whether indeed events perhaps have to be traumatic to feature so largely in collective recall. Troubling moral questions and a persisting sense of injustice surround the most contentious of these events, causing conti- nued political tensions within and between countries throughout the region. Th e obvious uniqueness or historical specifi city of each event should not prevent us from drawing comparisons between them. Indeed there may be a moral necessity to do so, so as to fi nd the possibly more universal aspects of the human potential for good or evil, resistance or corruption, violence or reconciliation. Th e studies gathered here suggest that memory as a social phenom- enon is marked by a multitude of tensions and oppositions: between the individual and the social, the popular and the offi cial, between forget- ting and remembering, or between dominant and suppressed narratives, the remembering of one story rather than another. Closer examination may prove some of these oppositions too crude: endless shades of ambi- guity mark the continuum between remembering and forgetting, for instance. One must consider what are the motivations or desires driving remembrance or forgetfulness; it is not always easy to determine whether the supposedly forgotten object is really removed from consciousness, or why at a particular moment it may dramatically return to public aware- ness. Th e chapters in Part II of the book revolve around stories of nations, destinies and identities; those of Part III concern the traumatic memories of specifi c events or of smaller groups within nation. Often, these two themes of trauma and identity are intertwined, so that it was not easy to structure the chapters into clearly defi ned sections. And through them all, we seek to pursue the more general questions raised in the opening chapter: How do we human beings work at the business of memory, and how does memory work on us? Why is there such Introduction 3 a compulsion to return to the past, especially to diffi cult, traumatic issues? Why is the work of memory often so slow, with long delays before these issues become matters of widespread public debate and renewed concern? How does the work of memory refl ect and embody particular interests or moral impulses in the present, leading potentially to major shifts in the world of discourse and ideas? Questions of identity are clearly an area in which memory has a special part to play. Just as the individual’s sense of identity depends on being able to remember who you were yesterday, collectivities too almost inevitably derive identity from shared memories. However, since memory is always highly selective, as well as potentially unreliable (Schacter, 1995), the processes by which collective memories are built and maintained deserve careful investigation. Th ese processes can be seen particularly clearly where the groupings concerned are relatively new. Several of the papers in this volume address the question of how the ruling parties of newer nation-states have gone about constructing a narrative of the past in the interests of creating a national identity, and persuading their citizens of its plausibility. Th eorists of the modern nation-state (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983; Benjamin, 1988, to men- tion only a few) have helped us to see that nations and their identities are artefacts, produced through a great deal of symbolic labour, whose outcomes are by no means a foregone conclusion. Th ese papers probe into the actual processes involved in the work of identity construction, reminding us that the stories could have been told diff erently, and re- vealing sometimes unresolved problems about the past. Maitrii Aung Th win’s paper explores how a historical event, the Saya San Rebellion of 1930–31, had been constructed by colonial adminis- trators and the legal process to justify the state’s counter-insurgency policy. Administrators had resorted to a counter-insurgency guidebook that had been written 15 years prior to the Saya San rebellion to inter- pret and frame the rationale for their suppression of dissenters. Bertram Carey, author of the guidebook, had cast the Burmese peasants as being easily incited by a teacher (saya) who claimed supernatural powers and monarchical aspirations. Due to their inclination toward nostalgia for the monarchy, the peasants were seen as being “superstitious”, “tradi- tional” and consequently unable to engage in modern political discourse. Th us the colonialists were able to make use of Carey’s model to frame the rebellion in political terms as the outcome of the protagonist’s kingly ambitions and his followers’ ignorance.