Indonesian Journal of Politics and Literary Studies
Vol. 1 No. 3 (2026): Memory, violence, and post-authoritarian literary politics in Indonesia

The Archive that refuses silence: testimony, documentary imagination, and counter-history in Indonesian literary narratives

Devita Septian Dwi Hidayati (Universitas Pembangunan Nasional "Veteran" Jawa Timur)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Sep 2026

Abstract

Background: Indonesia’s unresolved histories of colonial violence, the 1965–66 massacres, New Order repression, disappearance, exile, and post-authoritarian silence continue to shape literary narratives that confront the limits of official archives and public memory. Objective: This study examines how Indonesian literary narratives construct testimony, documentary imagination, and counter-history as counter-archival practices that refuse historical silence. Method: This study applies qualitative literary discourse analysis to a deduplicated corpus of 33 publicly verifiable items, consisting of primary literary texts, secondary scholarship, and contextual archival or human-rights records. Results: The corpus shows that testimonial voice is most powerful when mediated through fractured memory, embodied silence, family transmission, and spectral presence rather than through transparent confession. Documentary imagination appears through bureaucratic traces, paratexts, witness fragments, visual residues, and archival gaps that make absence analytically legible. Counter-history is concentrated around 1965 and New Order erasure, but also extends to colonial historiography, gendered memory, peripheral citizenship, and transnational displacement. Implication: This study demonstrates that literary narrative can be read as an ethical archive without being reduced to historical evidence. Novelty: This study contributes an integrated analytical model that connects testimonial voice, documentary trace, and counter-historical positioning in Indonesian literary memory studies.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

ijpl

Publisher

Subject

Description

Indonesian Journal of Politics and Literary Studies is a double blind peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes original research articles and critical studies at the intersection of politics, literature, and cultural discourse. This journal is published quarterly as a platform for the ...