<![CDATA[This article examines how Ziggy Zezsyazeoviennazabrizkie’s short story Kering constructs an alternative social world through the erasure of gender legibility, the centering of child characters, and the laundromat as a communal refuge. This study asks: (1) how the laundromat operates as a carnivalesque liminal chronotope; (2) how the collective first-person plural voice generates polyphony and shared child subjectivity; and (3) how voicelessness and bodily/identity anomalies mobilize grotesque realism to critique gendered structural violence. This research employs qualitative close reading supported by directed coding based on Bakhtinian carnivalesque theory (carnival “second life,” degradation/uncrowning, grotesque realism) and a gender-inclusive narrative perspective. Textual segments are coded across three analytic axes (space, voice, and body) then synthesized through interpretive content analysis. Kering stages the laundromat as a temporary egalitarian commons that suspends adult/patriarchal authority, enabling children’s communal life. The collective “we” voice distributes narrative agency across multiple child figures, producing polyphonic witnessing while weakening gender as a stable organizing category. Grotesque bodily imagery and motifs of voicelessness translate unspeakable harm into a material critique of structural violence, positioning gender erasure as a deliberate oppositional strategy rather than neutrality. The analysis focuses on a single short story; broader claims require comparative studies across contemporary Indonesian fiction and reader-reception research. The article integrates Bakhtinian carnivalesque, collective narration, and gender-inclusive reading to reframe children as modern subjects who contest normative gender and violence through form.]]>
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