Infrastructures of Impunity: New Order Violence in Indonesia

by Elizabeth F. Drexler

Overview

In Infrastructures of Impunity Elizabeth F. Drexler argues that the creation and persistence of impunity for the perpetrators of the Cold War Indonesian genocide (1965–66) is not only a legal status but also a cultural and social process. Impunity for the initial killings and for subsequent acts of political violence has many elements: bureaucratic, military, legal, political, educational, and affective. Although these elements do not always work at once—at times some are dormant while others are ascendant—together they can be described as a unified entity, a dynamic infrastructure, whose existence explains the persistence of impunity. For instance, truth telling, a first step in many responses to state violence, did not undermine the infrastructure but instead bent to it. Creative and artistic responses to revelations about the past, however, have begun to undermine the infrastructure by countering its temporality, affect, and social stigmatization and demonstrating its contingency and specific actions, policies, and processes that would begin to dismantle it. Drexler contends that an infrastructure of impunity could take hold in an established democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501773112
Publisher:	Southeast Asia Program Publications
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Series:	Cornell Modern Indonesia Project
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	282
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth F. Drexler is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Peace and Justice Studies at Michigan State University. She is the author of Aceh, Indonesia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Truth and Infrastructures of Impunity
1. Building the Foundation for Impunity
2. The Forgotten Mysterious Killings
3. Resist Forgetting
4. Narrating What is Known
5. Law without justice
6. The Red Thread
Conclusion: Infrastructures of Impunity beyond Indonesia

What People are Saying About This

Soe-Tjen Marching

Impressive. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Drexler's account of how truth-telling and the revelation of historical facts have failed to produce justice in post-1965 Indonesia is an important addition to scholarship on the New Order's legacies.

Soe Tjen Marching

Impressive. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Drexler's account of how truth telling and the revelation of historical facts have failed to produce justice in post-1965 Indonesia is an important addition to scholarship on the New Order's legacies.

John Roosa

Nuanced and compelling. Elizabeth F. Drexler explains how crimes of the state came not to be seen as crimes, despite the heroic labors of many victims and human rights activists. By uncovering the everyday structures of feeling that allow perpetrators to remain untouched, this book makes an important intervention into the literature on post-1965 Indonesian politics and culture.