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Contact Name
Regina Veronica Edijono
Contact Email
wacana@ui.ac.id
Phone
+6221 7863528
Journal Mail Official
wacana@ui.ac.id
Editorial Address
Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia Gd 2 , Lt 2 , Depok 16424, Indonesia
Location
Kota depok,
Jawa barat
INDONESIA
Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia
Published by Universitas Indonesia
ISSN : 14112272     EISSN : 24076899     DOI : https://doi.org/10.17510/wacana
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. It invites original articles on various issues within humanities, which include but are not limited to philosophy, literature, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, history, cultural studies, philology, arts, library and information science focusing on Indonesian studies and research. Wacana seeks to publish a balanced mix of high-quality theoretical or empirical research articles, case studies, review papers, comparative studies, exploratory papers, and book reviews. All accepted manuscripts will be published both online and in printed forms. The journal publishes two thematic issues per year, in April and October. The first thematic issue consists of two numbers.
Articles 647 Documents
Loving nature, praising the creator; The visualizations of the natural world in the Islamic magazine <i>Pandji Masjarakat</i> Zara, Muhammad Yuanda
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 1
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Abstract

This study examines previously unexplored visual representations of the natural world published in Pandji Masjarakat magazine in 1960. Known at the time as the most popular Islamic magazine in Indonesia, this publication not only discussed Islamic teachings as hitherto understood, but also provided ample space for the publication of drawings, paintings, and photographs of the natural world. This study argues that the visualizations of the natural world in Pandji Masjarakat were aimed at providing its Muslim readers all over Indonesia and in the wider Malay world with guidance on how to see the natural world and people’s place in it in proper perspective, namely beautiful nature is Allah’s creation and people are welcome to use it taking full responsibility and expressing proper gratitude for it. This study sheds light on the changing attitude of Muslims to the portrayal of living things by presenting how progressive Muslims represented the natural world visually amid the throes of the rapid physical development in increasingly modernized Indonesia.
On the nature of botanical gardens; Decolonial aesthesis in Indonesian contemporary art Boonstra, Sadiah
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 1
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This article examines decolonial approaches to the nature of botanical gardens in Indonesia in the artworks of nine artists featured in the exhibition On the nature of botanical gardens: contemporary Indonesian perspective at Framer Framed, Amsterdam in 2020. Zico Albaiquini, Arahmaiani, Ade Darmawan, Edwin, Samuel Indratma, Lifepatch, Ipeh Nur, Elia Nurvista, and Sinta Tantra presented works which confronted the coloniality of botanical gardens. This article provides a historical reading of the content matter of the artworks presented from a decolonial standpoint as conceptualized by Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and María Lugones. The article will demonstrate that the artists have applied various strategies and methods to uncover, criticize, and decolonize botanical gardens and their role in empire-building, knowledge development, and the exploitation of nature. Some artists take this farther and develop a decolonial aesthesis or sensibility in order to re-appropriate Indigenous knowledges and ways of being which were silenced and erased by coloniality.
The colonial legacy of <i>Mooi Indië</i> and the captive mind in the environmental policy of Citarum Harum Hapsoro, Chabib Duta; Yeru, Aulia Ibrahim
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 1
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Mooi Indië paintings represented the orientalist-colonial imagination of the picturesque Netherlands East Indies, with the obfuscation of the social realities on the ground and the silencing of the adverse effects of colonial capitalism. This article discusses the colonial legacy of Mooi Indië paintings on contemporary environmental policy in Indonesia, with a case study of the policy of the Citarum Harum Taskforce. This Taskforce was formed in 2018 and marked the national government’s attempt to rehabilitate the Citarum after it was declared one of the most polluted rivers in the world. It provides an analysis of several Mooi Indië paintings which depict the Citarum River and were created by European painters (such as Antoine Payen and Isaäc Groneman), before looking at the contemporary effects of the Citarum Harum’s beautification-oriented policy. The article also analyses some particular stereotypes of Netherlands East Indies natives as depicted in Mooi Indië paintings for comparison with the Taskforce’s policy implementation on the residents along the Citarum River. Ultimately, such a comparison demonstrates a form of colonial captivity at work today. The ideas of the Citarum Harum Taskforce demonstrate a captive mind, which continues to hide the socio-environmental problems which persist. This to the exploitation of the environment and people in the wake of the contemporary neoliberal system which dominates our worldview.
Mount Merapi in drawings and paintings; A dynamic reflection of nature, 1800-1930 Mohammad, Ghamal Satya
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 1
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Mount Merapi in Central Java is one of the world’s most studied volcanoes. The frequent eruptions of this volcano and the densely populated areas on its slopes make Merapi particularly important to scholars of the natural and social sciences. Considerable attention has been devoted to contemporary aspects of this volcano, including research into forecasting and monitoring possible volcanic activity and eruptions. However, research investigating artistic representations of Merapi in a historical context, particularly local artworks referring to how people responded to a natural hazard such as a volcanic eruption, is still rare. In this paper, I explore how artists in the period 1800-1930 have portrayed the volcanic activities in their drawings and paintings. Various historical data, including newspapers, reports, and records of volcanic eruptions, will be used to help interpret the accuracy of the paintings which depict Merapi at different moments in time. I argue that artists in the period under investigation were acutely aware of Merapi’s volcanic activities and depicted these in their drawings and paintings, because of the influence of science, which invokes interest in Merapi, landscape art, and a sense of humanitarianism. Their artworks are dynamic visual historical reflections of Merapi which testify to the power and beauty of nature.
The tropics and the East-Central European gaze; The natural world of Southeast Asia in Polish and Serbian travel writings Ewertowski, Tomasz
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 1
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The article analyses representations of the natural world in Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia in a corpus of Polish and Serbian travel writings for the period between the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) and the outbreak of the First World War (1914). The research is based on travel writings by twenty Polish and Serbian authors, who visited Southeast Asia during the period 1869-1914. Scrutinizing a corpus of such narratives should contribute to the study of perceptions of Southeast Asia, especially among travellers from very diverse backgrounds. The theoretical and conceptual framework of the article draws on works by other scholars who have analysed travel writings, imaginative geography, representations of Southeast Asia, and tropicality. The study focuses on four areas: 1) images of the luxuriant tropics, 2) images of the perilous tropics, 3) exploitation of its natural resources, and 4) nature and identity.
Wim van den Doel, <i>SNOUCK; Het volkomen geleerdenleven van Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje</i> Meij, Dick van der
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 2
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Creative <i>lifeworld</i> in Geriana Kauh Village; Intertwining of culture and nature during the pandemics in Bali Putri, LG. Saraswati
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 2
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This research is an attempt to delve into understanding the process of creative imagination of the sacred which is revealed in the intertwining of culture and nature in Geriana Kauh, Karangasem, Bali. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the individual, the social and ecology, as well as the transformation of individual consciousness into a collective awareness sharing a communal reality. This qualitative research is developed by incorporating theoretical analysis and formulating field data collected in the traditional Village of Geriana Kauh, as the villagers resort to their cultural resources to deal with the cosmological imbalances caused by pandemics. By means of a phenomenological examination, this investigation underlines the dynamic interlocking of the cultural and the natural worlds.
Journeys and metaphors; Some preliminary observations about the natural world of seashore and forested mountains in epic <i>kakawin</i> Worsley, Peter
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 2
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In earlier publications I have argued that ancient Javanese poets imagined the world to be one marked by distinctions between a social world consisting of palace (kaḍatwan) and countryside (thāni-ḍusun) and a wilderness of seashores and forested mountains (pasir-wukir). The social world was characterized by the presence of an effective royal authority; the wilderness by its absence. A distinction was also drawn between this world inhabited by human beings and a world in which gods, ancestral spirits, and other divine beings dwelt (kedewatan). Journeys through these landscapes are an enduring interest in the narrative literature in the literary tradition of ancient Java and Bali. Margaret V. Fletcher (1990, 2002, 2021), Tony Day (1994), Helen Creese (1998), Raechelle Rubinstein (2000), and Peter Worsley (2012b, et al. 2013) have argued that the accounts of journeys in epic kakawin and other related works are not just tales of travel between one physical place and another. Rather, they are accounts of other kinds of journeys: the “journeys” which poets seeking inspiration make or which ascetics seeking apotheosis with their iṣṭadewata undertake or those on which young men and women transitioning from childhood to adulthood embark. In this essay, I make some preliminary observations about passages describing journeys in the natural world in a diverse selection of works authored between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries in Java and Bali and discuss aspects of the metaphorical referencing of these descriptions.
Honey-bees, court ladies, and beekeeping in Java before 1500 CE Jákl, JiŘí
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 2
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People have been interacting with bees in the Indo-Malay world for thousands of years. Though the practice of robbing bees of honey and wax is relatively well-documented, we know very little about the early history of beekeeping in Southeast Asia. In this study I will use Old Javanese evidence to demonstrate that providing honey bees with artificial cavities was a practice known in Java at least by the twelfth century CE, several centuries earlier than suggested by the historians of beekeeping. In the second part of my contribution I will discuss in detail an intriguing passage in the Sumanasāntaka, a court poem composed in the early thirteenth century CE, in which a literary motif of the “marriage by choice“ (swayamwara) of Princess Indumatī is based on the image and structure of beehive. The idea that a bee-colony is ruled by the “queen“ rather than the “king“ was not widely known in pre-modern world, and the Sumanasāntaka suggests that pre-Islamic Javanese were good observers of nature.
Surviving the influenza; The use of traditional medicines to combat the Spanish flu in colonial Indonesia, 1918-1919 Ravando, Ravando
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia Vol. 23, No. 2
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The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 was widely regarded as the deadliest in modern history, claiming more lives than World War I. Colonial Indonesia was not spared. Several scholars have estimated that around 1.5 to 4.37 million people in the colony perished, making the death rate one of the highest in Asia. In the midst of the chaos and confusion caused by the pandemic, many people in colonial Indonesia turned to traditional medicines, particularly the poorer members of society who were inexperienced in Western medicine. Herbal treatment was considered a viable option for those who frequently faced discrimination when visiting Dutch clinics or hospitals. This essay demonstrates how more than a century ago, various ethnic groups in colonial Indonesia relied on nature to develop their own “vaccine” and medication in the fight against the Spanish flu. In the context of the pandemic, Sin Po and other newspapers played an essential role in spreading information about herbal medicines as an alternative, more affordable remedy than modern Western medicine. These newspapers provided the inspiration to investigate traditional Indonesian therapies more thoroughly. An examination of this subject reveals that there is nothing new under the sun. The colonial government never had a grand design to combat or stop the spread of a pandemic. It made almost no efforts at prevention and the outcome of this lack of preparedness was clear. Unfortunately, even more than a hundred years later, when COVID-19 struck Indonesia, nothing had really changed.

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