The Politics of Memory: The Social and Psychological Effects of Forgetting and Recalling Indonesia's Traumatic History

In 1965-66, an offensive against the left, led by the military, resulted in the killings, disappearances, incarcerations and exile of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians. Bali experienced some of the most intense violence, with 80,000 -100,000 people, or 5-8% of the population, murdered. Throughout the Soeharto era, these killings and incarcerations were justified by the state by espousing a particular historical interpretation of the events of September 30, 1965 (which the Soeharto regime claimed was an attempted Communist coup) and by the vilification of any persons claimed to be 'Communists' who were said to threaten the religious, moral and political integrity of the nation. Only since the fall of Soeharto in 1998 have scholars, activists and communities across Indonesia been able to reconsider the historical events of 1965-66 and to attempt to come to terms with the killings and their aftermath in local Indonesian communities.

Studies of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder are above all studies of memory and its effects - of the terrible impact on individuals and families of violence and terror, of efforts to forget the trauma and the intrusions of painful memories, of the consequences for individual psychological development and functioning of these memories, and of their sequelae in the social functioning of those traumatized. Such studies often focus rather narrowly on individuals and individual psychological functioning. However, in recent years, scholars of diverse disciplines have begun to look closely at processes of forgetting or repressing of memories and of remembering or recalling as social processes. Scholars have discussed how 'societies remember' or how they refuse to recall, and have investigated specific social mechanisms - such as truth and reconciliation commissions - established to reconsider history and bring to open discussion traumatic memories of individuals and groups in societies.

Putting together studies of individual lives of persons who have suffered trauma with research on social processes of forgetting and remembering remains quite difficult. On the one hand, clinical research on trauma and trauma disorders often fails to consider how traumatic memories and their effects are embedded in social life - to take seriously the on-going effects of traumatic events on families and communities, the continuing violence in which memory is embedded, the political dimensions of repression and recall, and the social consequences of the traumatization of individuals. On the other hand, writing about 'how societies remember' often fails to take seriously what is known from clinical (and basic science) research about the psychological effects on individuals of trauma, how traumatic memories are stored and processed, and how they shape psychological and emotional functioning. Bringing together these perspectives remains a significant and difficult challenge.

It is not our intention to propose a conceptual solution to this challenge in the short presentation we will give, but to introduce some basic data that must be considered if both the personal and the social/political dimensions of traumatic memory are to be integrated into our analyses. We will do so through consideration of the forgetting and remembering of the events of 1965 in Indonesia. First, we will argue that forgetting and remembering, in cases such as this, must be understood in the context of on-going social relationships among those who participated in the traumatic events - those involved in carrying out killings within the community and those whose family members were killed, those who participated in violence and betrayals, as well as those who were suspected, imprisoned, or intimately related to those marked as leftists. Second, we will argue that forgetting and remembering must be understood in the context of 30 years of political repression - of the repression of memories and the on-going portrayal of the events of 1965 and of 'communists' through the organization of state media in a way that justified the killings and the continued repression of political activists or those who would recall those events from an alternative perspective. Third, we will discuss efforts to recall those events in the context of social and political reform that followed the fall of Soeharto, and the personal and social effects of returning to those traumatic events. Throughout, we will argue for the importance of bringing together an understanding of individual lives and social, cultural and political processes of forgetting and remembering if we are to develop an adequate understanding of trauma and its effects.