Abstracts & Bio Notes - Asian Studies Association of Australia

investigator for the ‘Terrorist Motivations in Indonesia’ project, funded by Australian Research
Council. He was the C.V. Starr Visiting Professor in Indonesian politics at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, in 2003, and has been a
consultant to AusAID, USAID, The Asia Foundation and BP. (greg.fealy@anu.edu.au)
FERDINAL, (Deakin University)
Title: Anecdotes: Representing State Violence in Modern Indonesian Literature
Abstract: This paper investigates fictional representations of human rights issues in Indonesia as
found in the short stories published in the Indonesian media. These stories reflect on the
practice and handling of human rights in Indonesia in the last decade of the New Order (1990-
1998). The analyis deals with key issues related to violence as a form of human rights violation
committed by state related bodies, groups and individuals. Among a huge number of short
stories in the media, some take anecdotes as the form through which the writers resist the
institutional, social, or personal violence of the authoritarian and unjust regime. To maintain
its supremacy, the New Order regime applied tight censorship so as not to allow publication of
any text which could cause trouble to national stability. So when censorship was the problem,
some writers such as Putu Wijaya, took advantage of the power of anecdotes to resist. The
three works examined here – Putu Wijaya’s ‘Sket’, ‘Mulut’, and ‘Rakyat’ – represent Putu’s
cultural protest against the violations of human rights and unjust socioeconomic policies
applied by the Suharto New Order in the 1990s. In the analysis, I turn to political criticism to
show in some detail how the works come into existence. When alluding to violence and
censorship, I argue that theories of political criticism can offer us new insights into these
global topics as well as specifically into Indonesian sociopolitical history.
Bionote: Ferdinal is on-study-leave from the Faculty of Letters, Andalas University, Padang,
Indonesia and is now undertaking a PhD program in Indonesian Literature at Deakin University,
Australia. His research focuses on the issue of human rights in Indonesia, particularly in
Indonesian literature. His research and publications generally deal with the issue of violence,
gender, democratization and marginalization in Indonesian culture and literature.
(fnu_ferdinal@yahoo.com)
HALIM, Wahyuddin (The Australian National University)
Title: Pesantren As’adiyah in Sengkang, Wajo and its Role in Disseminating and Maintaining
Islamic Tradition in South Sulawesi
Abstract: Following the publication of Dhofier’s thesisabout pesantren in 1982 (1999), a
significant number of scholarly works have been written on this oldest Indonesian Islamic
model of learning.. Most of these works, however, focus on pesantren in Java, and to some
extent those in Sumatra. My paper will explore the important role played by Pesantren
As’adiyah in Sengkang, South Sulawesi through its education and Islamic mission programs
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