Why Those Guys with No Better Income Than You Have the Latest Gadget?

I was hospitalized for about a week due to that damn tropical fever. It’s not like that I don’t have time to buy any pesticide, it’s just the weather. This ‘musim peralihan’, like our fellow Indonesians would say, brings those diseases into frenzy. The mosquitoes are everywhere. I am not even sure where I get bitten.

Aside from the bad news, I get souvenir for you from my visit to the hospital. During my stay in there, which was quite traumatizing—lots of screams around, lots of cries around—I met this guy who happened to look after his ill brother. So young, with sturdy appearance and seemingly twisted mind, He smiles and mumbles a lot.

Well, those are not the interesting part at his disposal. What attracts me was his ever singing mobile phone from which today’s Indonesian top forties entertain us. The thing is quite expensive. While it can play music with built in speaker attached, mine can barely survive a call due to its low battery power.

Is his father rich? No. Is his mother rich? Very likely, no. He doesn’t live on his father’s or mother’s salary like me. He works a low-paid job. 

Then, how can he afford such a relatively expensive mobile while he works only as a blue collar worker? Or a better question, why don’t use the money for more important things fit his needs?

 

Resistance and Humanization

I previously read some good articles that hopefully cast light on this phenomenon. The first is by Nico Warouw of GMU’s Antropology Department. The article, published in Jurnal Analisis Sosial, Akatiga, is actually an excerpt from his PhD dissertation he defended at ANU, or rather that is what I think, which discuss how industrial workers in Tangerang assuming modernity or the image of being modern.

There Nico tells us how low-paid workers buy consumptive products normally identified with middle class households—i.e television, VCD/CD, mountain bike—to constitute their identity which by no means middle class. The act of consuming at the same time is the act of transcending identity and embracing a new state of being modern. This is modernism by the industrial workers. They themselves can be poor or financially insecure but the desire to be ‘modern’ like others around them should not be failed to be fulfilled. In short, this is resistance on symbolic realm.

Another good explanation to the same phenomenon might come from an independent scholar named Marcelo Diversi. He writes an article in Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies journal presenting his ethnographic work on Brazil’s street kids. There he found many street kids know very much about nike shoes or nike products. They know which one is original, and which one is forged. The kids, Marcelo writes, almost like live ads commercials. They mimic all information they get from television perfectly. Ironically, while having all the passion to own a nike they lack the most important thing: the guts to own one. It is ironic when Marcelo gives one of them his nike cap, all of them refuse it. They say they are afraid of being robbed or beaten to death if somebody wants to take the nike away from them.

Here, Marcelo proposes that the nike is a demarcation symbol which draws a clear line between normal people who can have nike without being afraid of being robbed and the street kids who have all the passion but don’t have the guts to have one. Their desire of wearing nike then, is a form of a need of humanization.

The moral story now; don’t feel pity, cynical, or critical. Be proud of them who got better gadgets while not having better income than you. They’re in struggle of something.

Maus

I’m working on my graduating paper now. Discouraged, under-stress, time limited, I have simplified it from its own original questions. As long as i can submit it this month and get the exam next month I have nothing to complain. I’ll finish the real project later on.

I need to graduate in November since being an undergrad too long is no good (That’s what Dad and Mom says, almost an imperative). A scholarship application is waiting in February and I still need time to make a theses proposal. Hopefully the time left between November and February will be enough to make a decent proposal on—I’m not sure, can it off.

To share my grad paper’s discussion a little—so don’t go anywhere yet. You may help me with this—it is actually an analysis on factors that render a movement in a cultural escalator. Cultural escalator, we know, is a term coined by Stuart Hall to address the phenomenon of different reception of works (cultural product like art) in different eras. For instance, Shakespearean drama in the 16th century was a popular work while now it is an esoteric canon. So was Charles Dickens’ works written in 19th century which in the present have the same fate. This is the moving up in a cultural escalator. The moving down is Pavarotti’s on Puccini’s Nessun Dorma and Mondrian’s motives on Converse shoes i think.

But I’m not analysing all them. I got Art Spiegelman’s Maus on my table instead. Maus managed to win the Pulitzer Prize for Special Citation-Letter in 1992. A year previously it entered the Museum of Modern Art with “Project: Art Spiegelman” an exhibition of drawings in the book. Maus phenomenon is quite revolutionary since the fact that it is formally a work with popular charcteristic (read: kitsch) but nevertheless could be accepted in the circle of canonical masterpiece.

When today you find that The New York Review of Books has special reviews on the so called graphic novels, or now you read Marjan Satrapi’s Persepolis with some sense of literary awareness (maybe Joe Sacco’s Palestine as well) and getting more familiar or bothered with the ever-increasing population of non-children comics in the nearest Gramedia bookstore, it all owe Maus success to some degree or another.

But for the time being, since I’m severely discouraged, let me just chill out a little with that Smooth Escape and a few bottles of beer.

Rizal Mallarangeng: Si Aktivis Tipe Baru

Orang Indonesia mengenal beberapa pepatah yang mempunyai arti sia-sia. Diantaranya antara lain; pungguk merindukan bulan dan mimpi di siang bolong. Jika kita melihat iklan politik para calon kontestan pemilihan umum mendatang, kita sering berpikir apakah mereka sudah luntur keIndonesiannya dan mulai lupa dengan pepatah-pepatah diatas.

Soetrisno Bachir hampir bukan siapa-siapa jika saja iklannya tidak sedemikian eksesif nyelonong tanpa permisi ke ruang keluarga kita beberapa bulan belakangan. Sementara Rizal Mallarangeng mungkin cuma dikenal oleh kalangan terbatas masyarakat Indonesia sebelum mulai akrab dengan slogan “where there is a will, there is a way”. Cuma Prabowo Subianto yang seharusnya masih diingat masyarakat Indonesia karena masih tersangkut paut dengan keluarga Cendana. Semua tokoh ini berbagi hal yang sama: ingin ngetop mendadak dan berharap dipilih masyarakat Indonesia yang sebagian besar mudah diharubiru iklan.

Saya ingin mencatat beberapa hal tentang Rizal Mallarangeng, sebab Bung yang satu ini punya latar belakang yang menarik sebagai seorang mantan aktivis mahasiswa.

Aktivis Tipe Baru

Pertama, latar belakang sebelum memutuskan terjun ke politik. Rizal, kita tahu, adalah direktur eksekutif Freedom Institute, sebuah lembaga yang berusaha untuk mendiseminasikan ide-ide tentang demokrasi dan kebebasan pada masyarakat luas lewat penerbitan buku, seminar, dan penganugrahan Achmad Bakrie Award. Sebelum memutuskan pulang untuk membangun lembaga ini, ia sempat mengajar di Ohio State University dimana ia meraih gelar doktornya dibawah bimbingan Bill Liddle. Disertasi yang ia pertahankan kemudian ia bukukan dengan judul Mendobrak Sentralisme Ekonomi Indonesia 1986-1992.

Yang menarik dari disertasi ini, selain gaya tulisannya yang memikat sehingga ekonom Chatib Basri sampai menjuluki Rizal sangat “berbahaya”, adalah idenya tentang komunitas epistemis, yaitu sekelompok individu yang berusaha menyuntikkan gagasan ke tengah masyarakat dan bertarung di pasar pertukaran wacana untuk mempengaruhi pengambilan kebijakan. Ide yang ia kemukakan kemudian menjadi sangat populer di kalangan aktivis mahasiswa yang sadar dengan mandulnya demonstrasi.

Ini kemudian membuat Rizal menjadi berbeda jika kita bandingkan dengan rekan sepantarannya kini di pentas nasional seperti Fadjroel Rahman; ia bukan aktivis yang dikenal sebagai demonstran. Rizal semasa masih menjadi aktivis mahasiswa lebih dikenal karena tulisan-tulisannya. Konon, ia adalah bagian dari mereka yang mendirikan Sintesa, sebuah lembaga pers mahasiswa di almamaternya Fisipol UGM. Ia pun aktif menulis di berbagai media nasional. Tulisan dan gagasannya tajam. Ia pernah meragukan kapasitas Arif Budiman sebagai seorang ilmuwan dan menjulukinya sebagai aktivis Kantian yang kukuh dengan ide-ide sosialisme walau langit runtuh. Ia juga membabat mereka yang meragukan perannya dalam negosiasi Cepu dengan balik menyerang pihak yang mengkritik Exxon hanya atas dasar nasionalisme semu sebagai bandit sebenarnya dalan kredo Samuel Johnson: nationalism is the last refuge of scoundrels.

Dari segi ideologi, Mallarangeng yang satu ini juga sangat menarik. Ia tidak jatuh dalam tradisi mantan aktivis mahasiswa Indonesia yang ke cenderung kiri secara ideologi, ia bahkan sangat condong ke kanan dalam spektrum pemikiran politik dan ekonomi. Ia adalah aktivis tipe baru. Bandingkan kembali dengan Fadjroel Rahman yang bercita-cita menasionalisasi aset-aset strategis terinspirasi dari kebijakan para pemimpin di Amerika Latin seperti Hugo Chavez. Dalam sejarahnya memang aktivis mahasiswa Indonesia banyak yang kiri secara ideologi, misalnya Hatta, Sjahrir, dan tentu saja Arief Budiman. Namun tentu saja kita harus melihat mereka secara historis sebagai bagian dari produk jaman. Kini di awal abad 21 ide-ide kiri konservatif ala nasionalisasi aset adalah mitos dan mereka yang tak beranjak darinya adalah mereka yang terbuai.

Apakah Rizal seorang ignoramus yang mengabaikan betapa pentingnya pengaruh pemikiran intelektual kiri? Kita pasti terkejut tatkala mengetahui bahwa pada masa mudanya sebagai mahasiswa Rizal justru sangat kiri sebagaimana diakui kakaknya, Andi Mallarangeng (Jakarta Post Weekender, Agustus 2008). Untuk menjelaskan transformasinya itu Rizal pun mengutip sebuah ungkapan yang sangat terkenal “mereka yang tidak kiri pada umur 20an artinya tak punya hati, tapi kalau masih kiri di umur 30, itu artinya ngga punya otak”. Ini satu dari sekian tindak-tanduknya yang membuat Rizal jadi legendaris di kalangan aktivis mahasiswa Gadjah Mada.

Kebaruan aktivisme Rizal juga dapat dilihat dari tindakannya yang lugas untuk tidak malu-malu berselingkuh dengan kekuasaan. Freedom Institute sebagian dananya ia peroleh dari kucuran dompet konglomerat Aburizal Bakrie yang juga seorang menteri dalam kabinet SBY. Mungkin karena itulah rekannya sesama aktivis, lagi-lagi Fadjroel Rahman, menuduhnya sebagai serdadu intelektual SBY.

Yang kedua menarik dari Bung ini tentu saja iklan politiknya yang unik berbentuk surat, dimuat di sebuah koran nasional beberapa waktu lalu. Inti surat Rizal adalah menjelaskan pilihannya untuk terjun dalam bursa calon presiden dalam pemilu 2009. Rizal tentu sadar kalau tindakannya mirip mimpi di siang bolong sebab ia tak punya basis dukungan kuat dari partai ataupun ormas tertentu. Tapi apa tepatnya apologi Rizal?

Rizal dengan tegas dalam suratnya menyatakan bahwa tindakannya masuk bursa calon presiden bukan masalah kalah atau menang. Pesannya singkat, bahwa di tengah stagnasi regenerasi kepemimpinan nasional yang didominasi muka lama ada anak muda yang berani mengemban tanggung jawab untuk memimpin.

Terobosan ala Rizal tentu menyegarkan saat kita menyadari banyak aktivis kita yang buntu dalam berpolitik. Pun mereka biasanya hipokrit dalam masalah kekuasaan. Mereka awalnya mengkritik namun akhirnya hanyut ketika berkuasa. Rizal justru beda, ia dengan terang-terangan menunjukkan ambisinya untuk ikut dalam gerbong kekuasaan.

Jika anda bosan dengan aktivis muka lama dan retorika usang, anda perlu beri perhatian lebih pada Bung satu ini. Manuver politik dan gagasannya sungguh-sungguh berbahaya.

Papua

Jika kita percaya sejarah selalu berada dalam ketegangan dan kontestasi diantara mereka yang mempunyai akses untuk memproduksi pengetahuan, maka kita akan dengan mudah memahami latar belakang tindakan penarikan buku oleh kejaksaan agung beberapa waktu lalu.

Buku berjudul Tenggelamnya Rumpun Melanesia: Pertarungan Politik NKRI di Papua Barat karya Sendius Wonda dianggap dapat memicu konflik dan keresahan di masyarakat. Apa persisnya isi buku yang dapat memicu konflik tak dijelaskan lebih lanjut. SK No. KEP-123/A/JA/II/2007 kemudian diterbitkan untuk menarik buku itu dari peredaran.

Itu baru kejadian yang pertama. Kejagung tampaknya tak berhenti sampai disitu ketika ia seminggu lalu kembali menarik buku berjudul Pemusnahan Etnis Melanesia yang ditulis Socratez Sofyan Yoman. SK No. Kep-052/A/JA/06/2008 pun diterbitkan untuk menyertai tindakan tersebut.

Di Yogyakarta, penerbit Galang Press terpaksa menyerahkan sisa 213 eksemplar dari keseluruhan yang sudah terlanjur dilempar ke pasar. Foto Julius Felicianus, direktur Galang Press, yang dengan wajah muram melakukan penyerahan buku pada seorang staf intel Kejati Yogya muncul di harian lokal Kedaulatan Rakyat. Foto itu tak kalah sentimentilnya dengan imej Jenderal Suharto yang ditunggui Michael Camdessus arm ajimbo untuk menandatangani perjanjian dengan IMF.

Takluk, demikian mungkin pesannya.

Sensor oleh Kejaksaan, kita setuju, adalah sebentuk usaha sistematis untuk menghalangi informasi tersampaikan ke khalayak luas. Artinya, Kejaksaan tak menganggap kita cukup dewasa (atau takut?) untuk mencerna informasi tersebut.

Ini lelucon buruk untuk menunjukkan bahwa memang terjadi sesuatu di Papua yang negara takut kita tahu.

Akankah sejarah Papua tak ditulis oleh anak kandungnya sendiri?

Ben Anderson

There is something I really like from Ben Anderson’s obituary for General Soeharto in NLR. It is his frankness in giving nasty comments on our elites. Quite straightforward and honest, he describes Megawati as lazy and overweight while not losing his sarcastic remarks to address the General’s children as either monster or nonexistent.

But that’s not the only article I enjoy. Scholarship on Indonesia and Raison d’etat: a Personal Experience is no less awesome. It tells Ben’s experience with Indonesian government after the publication of Cornell paper. As we know very well, Ben was forbidden to enter Indonesia because of his testimony on Indonesia before US congress and analysis on 1965 coup.

Then I just realize that I missed Ben in my reading list. How come a good writer like him can stay out of my list? Maybe it was because the first of his writing I read was a translated version of Imagined Communities. Speaking of the translated version, it was a typical Jogjakarta-based-publisher translation. You know what I mean.

No surprises if it makes me refrain from reading him any further. But a good writer is a good writer after all; you can’t escape his works. One day I found the English version of Census, Map, and Museum and I couldn’t help telling myself how foolish I was in my premature judgment of Ben’s writing. I should find his original writing instead of lamenting its translation.

A good friend of mine, Hatib, just gave me a bunch of Indonesia articles written by several Indonesianists including Ben. I’m enjoying them now. In case you want to read Indonesia articles as well, you can go right away to the site. I provide a link for you at the right corner of this blog.

Happy reading!

On My Girlfriend’s Graduating Paper

I always believe in this saying that states everyone has brilliant ideas and good interpretive skill. But the point is to spend a few months of one’s precious life to write all that down.

My girlfriend didn’t buy that.

Now she believes it’s true. Especially when she writes her graduating paper.

So this is the case of my girlfriend’s graduating paper. She is stuck, helpless and at the same time has all the brilliant ideas in her mind. Determined as she is, she can’t help the burst of emotional whining anytime I ask her about the progress. Its there, she said, I have written the whole interpretation of Roy’s The God of Small Thing. Yup, it consists of two fuzzy chapters and one pseudo-introduction.

I feel sorry to say that. Her idea is actually good. She suspects a relation between traumatic experience of one character in the story and India’s history in general. But she can’t secure a thesis whatsoever, and no idea how to present a good academic paper.

She can’t even define the problem appropriately in her introduction. Thanks to our curriculum which never introduces ‘filsafat ilmu’. It makes a typical stumbled-upon-skripsi student out of my girlfriend. No surprise when a seemingly so huge an enterprise like postcolonial studies is introduced, it easily leads students into theoretical blind alleys.

So I gave her some insights in order to help. I managed to introduce Jameson’s thesis on third world literature to her and ask her if that thesis fits Roy’s story. In my opinion, it is pretty simple. That’s the typical graduating paper for undergraduate; to see whether a thesis can be applied on a certain work.

Now she has another problem of tailoring India’s history to fit Jameson’s thesis.

With a wide smile I say this to myself: honey, if you don’t find it fits, you just interrupt Frederic Jameson. And that’s huge.

 

Manga Series

So this is the story behind why I am very fond of manga recently. It is because the other day I found a series of classic Kenji Goh adventure at a book rental nearby. I am a big fan of this series, no, a huge one. So then I decided to track back his entire story from book one till the last piece when he outtechniqued (is this word exist?) Tony Tan, his rival of a lifetime. And it was worth it, I still found Kenji as fascinating as it is inspiring as ever.

The second manga series that severely draws my attention is Master Keaton. As a detective story, this piece would never disappoint you like what Conan does with its rope-laden plot. Instead, its plot is very realistic, embroidered by contextual background setting. Check this out, it is written in 1991 and Master Keaton has already put Kuwait affair with Saddam’s invasion (known as Gulf War, as we acknowledge it well) as its background of adventure in Iraq.

Master Keaton or, Keaton Taichi Hiraga is an ex British SAS elite force during Falkland war army. Half Brit and half Japanese, in Japan he is an archaeology lecturer at a local university while crossing borders as ‘detektif partikelir’. Combining MacGyver skills, globalized Indiana Jones setting and adventure, the charm of a well educated scholar (Oxford graduate, note from me), and reputation of ex SAS elite force, you can’t have more of a hero. You know, it’s like putting Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, MacGyver, and perhaps Richard Leakey (FYI, a well known archaeologist, wrote that piece Origin of Mankind) together in one body. Geez…

When you read this post, I will be busy tracking Master Keaton series. I’m reading it now.

(Oh, I forgot this one. Keaton names his daughter Yuriko which is taken from his beloved lecturer Yuri Scout. This trivial fact means something to me as my father just do the same thing.)

Anyone Can Cook

A couple of months ago I read this review on Ratatouile; definitely a strong candidate for best movie of the year, as the writer put it there. It is an animation, running for about one and half an hour telling us a story about a little mouse named Remi. He very unlikely to our common sense can cook. Remi’s inspiration is Gusteau, a well known chef in Paris whose book happens to finds its way to Remi. In the book goes a catchy phrase of chef Gusteau; ‘anyone can cook…’

Still from that review, I acknowledge that recently people are caught by a trend to have a little mouse as a pet. Perhaps it is all about Remi, our hero in Ratatouile.

Since I finally watched the movie I can tell you that it was a pretty good one. You have my recommendation. About the trend, rather than having a little mouse roaming my house as my pet, however cute it would be, I prefer to have cooking as my new hobby. Oh, what a Gusteau wannabe I am. You should see me these days. With all the fuss I make in the kitchen, I am quite talented.

Cooking has long been my obsession. I know very well that those Mafioso in Goodfellas, even Al Capone himself can cook. It’s like the other side of their vicious act in business; they’re warm, light hearted chef at home for their family. It inspires me, you know.

Now you are getting curious about me cooking and make a silly guess like that of I boil water or cook instant noodle and tell it cooking. No, it’s serious. I’m cooking. I make ‘tongseng kambing’ or ‘kambing kecap’ and it was a damn delicious one. Just let me know when you want me around and cook dinner for you. Hehehehe

RayBan

You should come and see my new pair of sunglasses. It is a brand new RayBan Outsider Series. Just so you know I have been looking for this RayBan eversince Mas Ibas told me that he was really interested to my old Woody Allen-like glasses but with darker lenses to which he referred to as 80’s RayBan. If you happen to watch Tom Cruise’s Top Gun, he wears that 90’s RayBan said Mas Ibas. But no, I mean the 80’s and that’s rare.

Mas Ibas really aroused my curiosity to this rare stuff he’s been looking for. After sometime keeping an eye around, I finally see the picture of this pair of sunglasses; a photograph of Brad Pitt on a scooter sporting his Espanola or Mediteranean, whatever, working class style. With that I mean light brown khakis with white shirt and Putu Wijaya’s cap.

It takes me four months or so, before I unintentionally saw it at a sunglasses stall alongside jalan Colombo. It costs me 12.ooo rupiahs to which my friends say it was a rip off. Big deal, it’s rare isn’t it?

Simple, Black Pairs of Sandals

I was reading today’s Kompas, on which a photo capturing a meeting between Suu Kyi and junta’s representative is at top of its international page, when I saw something really interesting, and cute.

It was their feet. I didn’t see any pair of shoes there. Instead I found simple, black pairs of sandals.

Provided the context of their meeting was of the state’s affair, a good guess is that there should be a kind of protocol. A pair of sandals is unlikely to be included in such a meeting. Interestingly, the photo shows us that very fact; it is true anywhere else but in Burma. This makes Burma in all of a sudden looks mightily exotic to me. Off course, besides its bald revolutionary monks.

Talking about being revolutionary, don’t you think it is a good idea to have people wears a pair of sandal in our ‘istana negara’? A pair of shoes is not very indigenous, after all.

It happened, actually.

But in doing so, you have to be born as a street kid and better live around the neighborhood when Mr. President invite you to the state’s open house which is nothing but a propaganda to let him looks more popular.