Open lecture with Grace Leksana, Assistant professor in Indonesian History at Utrecht University

Ghosts and mysticisms are not distinct phenomena of Southeast Asian societies. What is unique, however, in the context of Southeast Asia and particularly Indonesia is the use of these spiritual experiences. Early records of colonial explorers in the Dutch East Indies already show mystical creatures that live as legends amongst Javanese societies. Academic scholars have also proposed various analyses of the role of spirits in Indonesian society, from placing them as the ‘potent dead’ in serving the socio-political agendas of the living, being the guardians of natural resources; to mystical creatures which became reasoning of peculiarities of structural changes brought by the international economy.

In this talk, I will explore another aspect of Indonesia’s spiritual world: as a medium to reconcile past human rights abuses when the state fails to do so. I will focus on the case of Indonesia’s anti-communist purge that commenced in 1965, causing the disappearance and death of more than five hundred to one million Indonesians. The Indonesian state never acknowledged these killings as acts of violence but demonized the victims by framing communists as the threat to society. The violence itself was a marginal episode in Indonesian historiography. Based on my fieldwork, we will look into different spiritual practices that became the medium to relive the disappeared and remember the violence, such as those reflected through intergenerational connections, sites of memory, and contemporary film industry. Ghosts, dreams, and hauntings are not merely spiritual reflections of Indonesia’s socio-cultural life, but they also became mechanisms to navigate a violent past. 

 

Grace Leksana is an assistant professor in the History Department, Utrecht University. Her works involve collective memory, history of violence, agrarian knowledge, and decolonization. Her recent book, Embedded Remembering: Memory Culture of 1965 Violence in Rural East Java (2023), explores the theme of memory of violence. The book was nominated for the Euroseas 2024 book prize. She is currently developing a project on violence and environmental engineering.